Wagram, as in duty bound, declared that the pleasure would be mutual. It was strange, he said, that he did not even know Major Calmour by sight; but he was so seldom in Bassingham, and had not been very long at the Court, for the matter of that. "We pulled that off well, Delia," said Clytie as they returned from seeing their visitor to the gate. "He's gone away thinking no small beer of us. He had heard all sorts of beastly things said about us, and came to see if they were true, and has come to the conclusion they are not." "Why do you think that?" Clytie smiled pityingly. "My dear child, I never saw the man yet I couldn't read like a book, even in matters far more complicated than that, and not often a woman. Never mind. I'll back you up all I know how if you'll go on playing up to me as you did just now. Oh, good Lord! there's the old man, and-- he's `fresh.'" For a volley of raucous profanity had swamped her last words, and over the top of the front gate a face was visible--a very red face indeed, surmounted by a hat awry. The profanity was evoked by its utterer's natural inability to open a locked gate by the simple process of pushing and battering against the same. Delia looked troubled. "Do you think _he_ saw him?" she said. "He's only just this second gone out." "Depends which way the old man came. But `he', if you remember, said he'd never set eyes on him." "Yes; but that's not to say he never will. And then, on top of that recognition, he'll be in no lively hurry to wend our way again." "Leave all that to the future, and chance," returned Clytie. "Oh, bother! The old man's blaring away like a calf that has lost its cow. We'd better let him in sharp or he'll draw a crowd." The two walked leisurely back to the gate, against which their parent was raining kicks--and curses. "Go easy, dad," said Clytie. "How the deuce can a fellow open the gate from this side what time you're banging it in from that? There! Now, come along." "How the deuce? Look here, you minx, that's nice sort of feminine language to use to your father, isn't it? Or to anyone," he repeated as he walked stiffly and with an ominous swaying gait up the garden path. "And that's nice sort of masculine language to use to your daughters-- and the gate, and things in general, as you were doing just now, isn't it?" laughed Clytie serenely. "Unless you can plead, with the proverbial Scotchman, that you were only swearing `at large.'" "Ha-ha! What a girl it is!" chuckled the old man, with the suspicion of a hiccough. "You ought to go on the stage, dear; you'd make your fortune." "No doubt. But I've got to get there first. I say, dad, who d'you think has just gone?" "Dunno, don't care; only that I'm devilish glad they have gone. Now I can have a `peg.'" "No, you can't." "Can't! What the devil do you mean, Clytie?"