Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/319

 ‘Beggar the sun!’ rapped out Lesbia, in her loudest tones, forgetting where she was, in the excitement of the moment, for she joined heartily in her uncle’s contempt for the current calendar. All faces in that end of the ballroom turned, and there was a general roar of laughter. Lesbia’s aunt put on her propriety stare; and an old paterfamilias, invited because he was a neighbour of thirty years’ standing and had known Mrs Bristley before her marriage—not only stared, but blushed.

‘Now then, Mr Leckinsopp!’ said Lesbia, making as though she were going to pat him on the back, ‘what’s up with you? You look as uncomfortable as if you were leading out a sixty to mount in a gale!’

‘Leading what, my dear Lesbia?’

‘Oh, Mr Leckinsopp, I really must tell you a story about Miss Newman,’ interrupted Julius Dandidimmons, who had come near Lesbia again when he saw that Letitia was out of the way. ‘At the last Frogmore annual flower-show there was a young fellow about my age, but a head and shoulders taller—six feet three at the very least—anyhow, a visitor and a stranger. Up walks Miss Newman straight to him, eyes him from head to foot as if she were inspecting a horse, pronounces aloud the word ‘Sixty,’ then turns on her heel and rejoins her party. The fellow stared, as you may suppose, and I heard him say to himself, ‘Devilish free and easy gurl, that! Me sixty! I'll pay her in her own coin presently.’ And presently he did; as Miss Newman happened to pass near him, he planted himself astride of her course, stared her in the face, and said in a loud, deep voice, ‘Forty-five.’ ‘Forty-five!’ returns Miss Newman promptly. ‘Bless you, man, fifty-two!’ ‘Nonsense!’ exclaims the fellow, quite taken aback. ‘You can’t possibly be fifty-two; you don’t look more than fifteen!’ But it turned out, on mutual explanation, that it was the height of bicycles, and not the respective ages