The only thing to be done was to ignore it! So I rose to my feet as primly as I could, and said: "Good afternoon! They will all be sorry that you came too late for the picnic. I believe Miss Vi Vassity has gone down there, to the left"--here I pointed towards the grey-blue sweep of distance cut by the mast of a wireless station somewhere near. "And Miss Million is with her."
The Hon. Jim said gently: "I was not really asking which way they had gone. What I really wanted to know is----"
Here he looked hard at me----"What has happened to--" here his voice changed again--"to the gentleman from the new, young, and magnificent country, where the girls are all peaches, and their lovers are real, virile, red-blooded, clean-limbed, splendid specimens of what the Almighty intended the young man to be, I guess?"
Try as I would, I could not keep my lips from quivering with laughter at the perfect imitation which Mr. Burke gave of the young man who was certainly worth ten of him in every way, even if he does not speak with the accent of those who have "come down" (and a good long way, too) from the Kings of Ireland.
"If you mean Mr. Jessop," I said distantly, "I think he went off with Miss Vassity and his cousin."
"Ah!" said the Hon. Jim, on a long-drawn note. "Oh! the cousin of the little Million, is he? Is that it? Does that account for it?"
"Account for what?" I said rather snappishly; and then, feeling rather afraid that he might answer with something that had nothing to do with the matter in hand, I went on hastily: "I don't think they can have gone more than about ten minutes. They will be so glad to see you! You will easily catch them up if you hurry, Mr. Burke----"
Mr. Burke allowed all the noble reproach of a hunger-striking suffragist to appear in those blue eyes of his as he looked down at me.
"Child, have you the heart of a stone?" he asked seriously. "'Hurry,' says she! Hurry! To a starving man who has walked from the Refuge here on his flat feet, without so much as a crumb of lunch or the memory of a drink to fortify him! Hurry? Is that all you can think of?"
One can't let a man starve, can one? So----
I was simply forced to do what I could for this undeserving late-comer in the way of feeding him after his tramp across the downs.