Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/224

 you want to shew him off in his muzzle. ’Tain’t cricket, Ann, if you ask me; you’ve won, and there’s no need to crow over the old boy. ’Tain’t as if he’d given you any trouble before.”

“I must give it up,” I said in despair. “Spenworth, will you tell me—in language comprehensible to my poor wits—whether you and your wife are coming to dine on the eighteenth?”

“Thank you very much, Ann,” he answered, “we are not. ’Matter o’ fact, I’m taking the chair at a regimental dinner, but if I wasn’t. . . I think it’s an infernal shame and I hope it’s a rotten party.”

And then he turned on his heel. . . I can never see his charm, myself. People excuse his rudeness, his immorality, his utterly wasted, self-indulgent life. . . They say he’s “such a good fellow”, whatever that may mean. . . But I find it very hard to speak coolly about Spenworth. ..

Without wanting to be inhospitable, I was secretly relieved that he could not come. The dear princess is the soul of tolerance, but I was not at all sure how she would receive his name; I was not at all sure that he would even behave himself properly. Did I ever tell you how he set himself to drive the Archbishop out of the