Page:Sixes and Sevens (1911).djvu/270

“I’m not blaming you. I’m only trying to make you happy.”

“You go about it in a very peculiar way.”

“You have been cross with me all the evening without any cause.”

“Oh, there isn’t any cause except — you make me tired.”

Corny took out his card case and looked over his collection. He selected one that read: “Mr. R. Lionel Whyte-Melville, Bloomsbury Square, London.” This card he had inveigled from a tourist at the King Edward Hotel. Corny stepped up to the man and presented it with a correctly formal air.

“May I ask why I am selected for the honour?” asked the lady’s escort.

Now, Mr. Corny Brannigan had a very wise habit of saying little during his imitations of the Caliph of Bagdad. The advice of Lord Chesterfield: “Wear a black coat and hold your tongue,” he believed in without having heard. But now speech was demanded and required of him.

“No gent,” said Corny, “would talk to a lady like you done. Fie upon you, Willie! Even if she happens to be your wife you ought to have more respect for your clothes than to chin her back that way. Maybe it ain’t my butt-in, but it goes, anyhow — you strike me as bein’ a whole lot to the wrong.”

The lady’s escort indulged in more elegantly ex-