"Look at those bounders, now," said Ted, who had not heard her. "It doesn't matter to _them_ that rowing on the Serpentine on Saturday afternoon isn't the thing to do, especially in frock coats and bowlers. It makes one quite sorry for them, to see how little they know; they don't even know they are bounders, poor devils! But _they_ never get the hump, confound them!"
"All the same," said Katharine, "it is a big price to pay for an immunity from humps, isn't it?"
"Life must be awfully easy, if you're a bounder," continued Ted. "You haven't got to be in good form, and you can walk about with any sort of girl you please, and you needn't worry about the shape of your hat, and it doesn't matter if you are seen on a green Brixton 'bus. It saves so much thinking, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said Katharine. "But you have to be a bounder all the same, and you know you can't even contemplate such a possibility, or impossibility, without shuddering. By the way, is all this intended to convey that you have got the hump this afternoon?"
"Oh, no," said Ted, with restored cheerfulness. "I ought never to have been born, of course; but that's quite another matter."
Late that evening the Rector proposed returning to Ivingdon. They had just been to the theatre, and Ted had asked them in to supper afterwards. Every trace of his mood of that afternoon had disappeared, and he was wrangling with Katharine over the strength of the Rector's toddy with all the energy of which his languid nature was capable. Katharine put down the tumbler she was holding and looked swiftly round at her father.
"Oh, daddy, not yet!" she cried impetuously. "I am happy now; don't let us spoil it all by going home. I feel as though something horrible would happen if we went home now. Can't we wait a little longer? I have never been happy like this before."
The Rector murmured something about its being three weeks to Christmas, but his sense of duty was obviously a perfunctory one, and he soon found he was not being listened to. And Ted's hand closed over her fingers as he took the hot glass from her, and his face shone with pleasure and his voice trembled, as he whispered, "Thank you for that, dear."
She did not shrink from him as she had done once before when he had looked at her with that same eager expression in his eyes.