Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/180

166 supposed to represent myself, "I will tell you a wheeze," whereupon both the female characters fell to their knees shrieking, "Not that! My God, not that!" while Oswald sneered viciously and muttered, "Serves me right for leaving Boston."

To show the infamy of the thing, I must here explain that at several social gatherings, in an effort which I still believe was praiseworthy, I had told an excellent wheeze which runs: "Have you heard the story of the three holes in the ground?" I mean to say, I would ask this in an interested manner, as if I were about to relate the anecdote, and upon being answered "No!" I would exclaim with mock seriousness, "Well! Well! Well!" This had gone rippingly almost quite every time I had favoured a company with it, hardly any one of my hearers failing to get the joke at a second telling. I mean to say, the three holes in the ground being three "Wells!" uttered in rapid succession.

Of course if one doesn't see it at once, or finds it a bit subtle, it's quite silly to attempt to explain it, because logically there is no adequate explanation. It is merely a bit of nonsense, and that's quite all to it. But these boors now fell upon it with their coarse humour, the fellow Hobbs pretending to get it all wrong by asking if they had heard the story about the three wells and the others replying: "No, tell us the hole thing," which made utter nonsense of it, whereupon they all began to cry, "Well! well! well!" at each other until interrupted by a terrific noise in the wings, which was followed by the entrance of the supposed Cousin Egbert, a part enacted by the cab-driver who had conveyed us from the station the day of our