Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/21

 Lady Drewitt had looked across the table with a startled expression in her eyes. It had suddenly dawned upon her that unpleasant consequences to herself might ensue from this rash determination on the part of her nephew to seek his future happiness amidst by-ways and hedges.

"It seems to me" began Edward Seymour, in a thin, protesting voice.

"Never mind what it seems to you," said Lady Drewitt, whereat Edward Seymour had collapsed, screwing up his little features into an expression of pain. Mrs. Edward had caught him full in the centre of the left shin with the sharply pointed toe of her shoe.

At Drewitt House Mrs. Edward's feet were never still when her husband was within range. Lord Drewitt had once suggested that he should wear shin-guards, Mrs. Edward's methods of wireless telegraphy being notorious. Sometimes she missed her spouse, as other guests knew to their cost. Once she had landed full on the tibia of a gouty colonial bishop, whose language in a native dialect had earned for him the respect of every man present, when later translated with adornments by one of the company.

"If Edward had spent days and nights in the trenches," Lord Drewitt had said, as, with great intentness, he peeled a walnut, "he would understand why Richard shrinks from the Foreign Office."

"It would be impossible," Beresford said, "to