u abysmal chump, I appeal to you once more. Will you please
lay off? You'll only make things ten times as bad as they are already."

I remember reading in one of those historical novels once about a chap--a
buck he would have been, no doubt, or a macaroni or some such bird as
that--who, when people said the wrong thing, merely laughed down from
lazy eyelids and flicked a speck of dust from the irreproachable Mechlin
lace at his wrists. This was practically what I did now. At least, I
straightened my tie and smiled one of those inscrutable smiles of mine. I
then withdrew and went out for a saunter in the garden.

And the first chap I ran into was young Tuppy. His brow was furrowed, and
he was moodily bunging stones at a flowerpot.

-8-

I think I have told you before about young Tuppy Glossop. He was the
fellow, if you remember, who, callously ignoring the fact that we had
been friends since boyhood, betted me one night at the Drones that I
could swing myself across the swimming bath by the rings--a childish feat
for one of my lissomeness--and then, having seen me well on the way,
looped back the last ring, thus rendering it necessary for me to drop
into the deep end in formal evening costume.

To say that I had not resented this foul deed, which seemed to me
deserving of the title of the crime of the century, would be paltering
with the truth. I had resented it profoundly, chafing not a little at the
time and continuing to chafe for some weeks.

But you know how it is with these things. The wound heals. The agony
abates.

I am not saying, mind you, that had the opportunity presented itself of
dropping a wet sponge on Tuppy from some high spot or of putting an eel
in his bed or finding some other form of self-expression of a like
nature, I would not have embraced it eagerly; but that let me out. I mean
to say, grievously injured though I had been, it gave me no pleasure to
feel that the fellow's bally life was being ruined by the loss of a girl
whom, despite all that had passed, I was convinced he still loved like
the dickens.

On the contrary, I was heart and soul in favour of healing the breach and
rendering everything hotsy-totsy once more between these two young
sundered blighters. You will have gleaned that from my remarks to Aunt
Dahlia, and if you had been present at this moment and had seen the
kindly commiserating look I gave Tuppy, you would have gleaned it still
more.

It was one of those sear