Mr. Calcraft laughed. "If you’d been at ’The Moonstone’ the other evening, sir, you would have seen more than a sign. He broke every cue in the billiard room, and nearly threw the marker out of the window!" "Did he frow a man out of the window?" exclaimed Fuzzy ecstatically. "Oh, Mr. Bookie _is_ strong." There was a horror-stricken pause. They had forgotten Fuzzy. His mother looked reproachfully at Mr. Calcraft, and somebody murmured something about _virginibus puerisque_. "If only the ’Bookie’ could be kept sober," Mr. Calcraft remarked apologetically, "he would be a splendid chap. He is all right for weeks together, and is as hard as nails; then he goes off and makes an ass of himself down town, and it makes people cut him. He told me the other day that he doesn’t know a lady in the place." "He is going to know one!" said Fuzzy’s mother, "he’s going to know _me_. I think it is too bad. You all say he is foolish, yet not one of you has the courage to tell him so, I think it is a shame." "He would be an awkward chap to tackle," murmured Mr. Calcraft. "He’d throw you out of the window as soon as look at you." "He can’t throw me out of the window," said Fuzzy’s mother, "and I shall talk to him. You must ask him to lunch, Hugh!" Then we all went to eat gooseberries in the kitchen garden and played at horses with Fuzzy. The first day of the horse show Riddell was with Mrs. Ainger all the time. As usual he was untidy. His tie was over his collar, his collar frayed; he wore a terrible old cap, and the front of his coat was smothered in dust from Fuzzy’s boots, for that gentleman spent the greater part of the afternoon perched on Riddell’s shoulder. "The Bookie" looked radiant, and carried off his lady to tea in the tent; I followed, sitting with friends at the next table. They looked a little surprised at Mrs. Ainger’s cavalier, for that lady was known to be particular as to the men she admitted to intimacy. Afterwards I heard all about it. It seems that the professor had asked Riddell to lunch, and that he had behaved beautifully. He was a cultivated man, and talked well, in the softest, most musical voice in the world. His knowledge of swear-words was the widest and most far-reaching; when with men his conversation was so garnished with oaths, that one had to pick one’s steps, as it were, to discover what he was talking about. But with ladies, he was the most courtly and careful of men. At the horse show he had discovered Mrs. Ainger trying to lift Fuzzy to see over the heads of some yokels who obstructed the view. In a moment Riddell had relieved her of her burden, and devoted himself to her for the rest of the day. The professor was counting marks and could not come.