Then he went back to the room, and stood on the hearthrug
before the. paper fireplace ornament. "Cads!" he said in a
scathing undertone, as a fresh burst of laughter came floating
in. All through supper he had been composing stinging repartee, a
blistering speech of denunciation to be presently delivered. He
would rate them as a nobleman should: "Call themselves
Englishmen, indeed, and insult a woman!" he would say; take the
names and addresses perhaps, threaten to speak to the Lord of the
Manor, promise to let them hear from him again, and so out with
consternation in his wake. It really ought to be done.
"Teach 'em better," he said fiercely, and tweaked his moustache
painfully. What was it? He revived the objectionable remark for
his own exasperation, and then went over the heads of his speech
again.
He coughed, made three steps towards the door, then stopped and
went back to the hearthrug. He wouldn't--after all. Yet was he
not a Knight Errant? Should such men go unreproved, unchecked, by
wandering baronets incognito? Magnanimity? Look at it in that
way? Churls beneath one's notice? No; merely a cowardly
subterfuge. He WOULD after all.
Something within him protested that he was a hot-headed ass even
as he went towards the door again. But he only went on the more
resolutely. He crossed the hall, by the bar, and entered the room
from which the remark had proceeded. He opened the door abruptly
and stood scowling on them in the doorway. "You'll only make a
mess of it," remarked the internal sceptic.
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