Dicky, quite undisturbed by the press, continued the conversation.
"Yes, the family are all very fit," he said. "You must come and stay with us. I shall give myself a week’s holiday at Christmas and take you and Connie down to Shotley Beauchamp, and we will have a pop at Ethelbert, our pheasant, and discuss the days that are no more."
"Talking of the days that are no more," I began, stepping aside to avoid a stout lady carrying an inverted baby under one arm and an imperfectly draped rocking-horse under the other, "what has become--"
"Hilda Beverley--eh?" replied Dicky cheerfully. "I’ll tell you all about her. (Don’t apologise, sir, really! After all, I still have an eye left, and you very nearly lost your umbrella.) She is engaged, if not married, to an Oxford Don. I believe they are very happy. They go out and sing an ode to Apollo every morning before breakfast, or something of that kind."
A wedge of excursionists clove its way between us, and it was with a voice unconsciously raised that I remarked from the gutter:--
"Not at all!" yelled Dicky loyally from the other side of the pavement. ("Mind that kiddie’s balloon, old son!) No," he continued, as we converged once more, "I had a very profitable six months. Hilda took immense pains with me, and it was n’t her fault that I turned out a failure."
Presently I asked a question which always rose to my lips when I met Dicky after any considerable interval.
"Have your family any fresh matrimonial irons in the fire for you at present?" I enquired.
"No," replied my friend, "I rejoice to say they have not. The market is utterly flat. The Hilda Beverley slump knocked the bottom out of everything, and for the last half-year I have been living a life of perfect peace. I am settling down to a contented spinsterhood," he added, to the obvious surprise and consternation of a grim-looking female in a blue mackintosh who had become wedged between us. "In a few years I shall get a tabby cat and a sampler, and retire to end my days in the close of some quiet cathedral city."
The female in the mackintosh, by dint of using her elbows as levers and our waistcoats as fulcrums, heaved herself convulsively out of our company and disappeared in the crowd, probably in search of police protection. Dicky and I came together again.