"No! You don"t say so now?" returned the other, open-mouthed, and not detecting the fine irony of his banterer"s tone.
"Yes, of course. And now excuse me. I must go and find my partner."
"Certainly--certainly. You young fellers! I was a young feller once, ha, ha, ha!" And old Garrett winked, and contorted his visage in the direction of his recent interlocutor in such wise as should mean volumes.
"This is ours, Miss Strange."
Lilian had just come in. She had pa.s.sed close behind the speaker while he was talking to old Garrett, and her entrance did not remain long undiscovered.
"Do you know, I had quite begun to fear you were not going to appear to-night--that you were tired or unwell," he said, as they made their way to the dancing-room.
"Bight and wrong. I was tired, and so rested instead of dressing earlier. Now I am all right again, and never felt so well in my life."
"Nor looked it."
It slipped out. The slightest possible flush came into Lilian"s face.
"You must not pay me compliments, Mr Claverton," she said, gravely, but with a smile lurking in her eyes. "They are what you men call "bad form.""
"But consider the provocation."
"Again? What am I to do to you? I know. I shall scold you. This is the second time to-day that you have reproached me for being late. This morning and now."
_Certes_ the provocation was excessive. She was looking surpa.s.singly beautiful this evening, in creamy white, with a velvety rose of deepest crimson on her breast; another bud, a white one, nestling among the thick coils of her bronze-tinted dark hair. Many a glance of astonished admiration greeted her entrance, and followed her about the room; but the quiet repose of the lovely face was devoid of the least sign of self-consciousness.
"By Jove!" remarked Armitage to his partner, a chubby little "bunch"
with big blue eyes and a b.u.t.ton mouth. "Claverton"s a sly dog.
_That"s_ why he was in no hurry to begin. Oho, I see now."
"She _is_ pretty. How well they look together!" was the reply, as the two stood against the wall to watch them.
Ethel, whirling by with the Civil Commissioner"s clerk, caught the last remark. She would have given much to have been able to box poor little Gertie Wray"s ears severely, then and there. That young lady babbled on, utterly void of offence.
"I say, though," said her partner. "She cut you out. Claverton was just on his way to ask you when she came in. He was, really."
"Was he? Then he should have asked me before. My programme"s full now."
Meanwhile let us follow the pair under discussion.
"Who was that poor old man you were chaffing so, just now?" Lilian was saying.
"Only a curious specimen of natural history. But how do you know I was chaffing anybody?"
"Because I heard you. Who is he?"
"What perception you have got! "He" is old Garrett, hight Joe, who migrated hither in the year one, to escape the terrible evil of having to dress for dinner."
Lilian could not speak for laughing.
"Fact, really; he"s just been telling me all about it. Bother! This dance is at an end. We are down for some more together, though."
"Too many."
"I claim priority of right. I claim your sympathy as a fellow sojourner in a far country. I appeal to your compa.s.sion to rescue me from standing out in the cold, in that you are the only one with whom I can gravitate round this festal room without peril to my neighbours" elbows and shins, and they know it, and shunt me accordingly."
"I don"t believe a word of it," laughed Lilian. "It is you who shunt them."
"No, I am telling you solemn truth. And now have I not made it clear to you that it is your bounden duty to take pity on me and help the proverbial lame dog over the ditto stile?"
"Well then, I"ll see what I can do for you. Now find me a seat--there, thank you--and go and "victimise" some one else," she added, flashing up at him a bright, mischievous glance.
"Not yet. Have pity on--the public elbow and shin. I want to rest, too, after discharging my recent heavy responsibility without disaster;"
and he made a move towards the seat beside her.
"No. You are not to shirk your duty. Go and do as I wish, or I shall consider it my duty to lose my programme. That means a new one, blank, and then memory is not a trustworthy guide." And as at that moment some one came up to ask her for a dance, Claverton was constrained unwillingly to obey, or rather, partially to obey, for he fell back on his old position in the convenient doorway, whence his eyes followed her round and round the room, to the complete exclusion of the other score of revolving couples.
"Mr Claverton, do prove a friend in need, and save me from the clutches of that awful Dutchman bearing down upon me from over there," said a flurried, but familiar voice at his elbow. "I promised him in a weak moment, and now he"s coming. Say you"ve got me down for this, and persuade him it"s his mistake. Quick! here he comes."
"All right. But you told me once you"d rather go round with a chair, you know, than with me."
"Did I? Never mind; don"t be mean and rake up things," replied Ethel, and away they went, while the defrauded Boer, thinking his own sluggish brain was at fault in the reckoning, adjourned to a certain corner of the other room in order to solace his wounded feelings with a _sopje_ (dram).
"How about England"s disappointment?" said Ethel, maliciously, during a pause.
"That affliction has been indefinitely averted. By the way, I never thought to see Allen so screwed."
"Er--I"m not screwed," mildly objected that long-suffering youth, who had pulled up with a swaying jerk alongside of them.
"Aren"t you? My good fellow, a man who is capable of mistaking my substantial and visible means of support for this exceedingly well-polished floor, must be in a critical condition."
"Oh--ah--er--was that you I trod upon? I didn"t know--I"m awfully sorry."
Half-a-dozen bystanders exploded at this, and the dance over, Claverton began to think he had done a considerable share of duty, and sought an opportunity of claiming an instalment of the promised reward; but his turn had not yet come. Presently he overheard a girl near him say:
"What do you think of that Miss Strange?"
He recognised in the speaker one Jessie Garrett, a daughter of Joe of that ilk.
"Well, she"s very pretty, there"s no doubt about that," answered her partner, a stalwart young ostrich-farmer from the Graaff Reinet district.
"Should you admire her as much as Ethel Brathwaite?"
"No; I don"t think she"s a patch on Miss Brathwaite; but there"s something awfully fetching about her, for all that."
"Well, there"s no accounting for tastes. I think she"s too colourless-- washed-out looking,"--a fault the speaker herself could in no wise plead guilty to. She was a pretty girl herself, in the florid, barmaid style, but as different a creature to Lilian Strange as a plump dabchick to an Arctic tern.
Claverton"s lips curled as he looked from the offending couple to the object of their remarks.