Leonidas, had in the past won £1,800 off them at cards—and spent it—they Jimmy and Melba, had won f2,000 off him—and had never got it! For his father (unlike their fathers) had refused to pay. But Mr. Brassington, Jun., was not the man to introduce a subject of that kind. It is a subject of the kind that jars on toffs, unless indeed the toffs themselves introduce it. And on this particular occasion they did.
Mr. Brassington, Jun., had drunk reasonably, Jimmy largely, Melba immoderately. They had come to that one of the many courses which consisted in a very small frozen bird, when Jimmy playfully threw a bone at his guest (who ducked and missed it), and followed his action with the words—
"You didn't think we should run to this, did you, Booby?"
"Well," said Algernon Sawby Leonidas Brassington delicately, "of course, I knew that you wanted me to settle, and God knows I tried."
"That 's all right," said Melba, in a voice still clear and articulate. "Your father 's paid."
And having said this, he burst into somewhat unreasoning laughter, choked, and
