Here they drew breath, and Tilda again clutched the dog.  They were in time, but with a very little to spare.  In less than a minute the mob surged all around the platform, shouting, hooraying.

“Three cheers for Miss Sally!  The Ham—­where’s the Ham?  Give Miss Sally the Ham!  Silence, there—­silence for Sir Elphinstone!  Speech from Sir Elphinstone!  Speech!”

By and by the hubbub died down a little, but still there were cries of “Sir Elphinstone for ever!” “Miss Sally for ever!” and “Your sister’s won the Ham, sir!” A high-pitched voice on the outskirts of the throng began to chant—­

    “For really it was a remarkable ’am!”

But got no further, being drowned first by sporadic, uneasy laughter, and then by a storm of hisses.  A tremendous roar of laughter followed, and this (although Tilda could not guess it) was evoked by Miss Sally’s finding the ham where it stood derelict on a table among the greenhouse plants, lifting it off its plate and brandishing it before the eyes of her admirers.

Tilda could see nothing of this.  But she was listening with all her might, and as the uproar died down again she caught the accents of a man’s voice attempting a speech.

“My friends,” it was saying, still lifting itself higher against the good-humoured interruptions, “my very good friends—­impossible not to be gratified—­expression of good will—­venture to say, on the whole—­ thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.  My sister”—­(interruptions and cheers for Miss Sally)—­“my sister begs me to say—­highly gratified—­spirit of the thing—­but, if I may plead, some degree of fatigue only natural—­ won’t misunderstand if I ask—­disperse—­quietly as possible—­eh?  Oh, yes, ‘God save the King,’ by all means—­much obliged, reminder—­ thank you—­yes, certainly.”

Thereupon the band played the National Anthem, and the throng, after yet another outbreak of cheering, dispersed.  Followed a silence in the darkness under the platform, broken only by the distant thudding bass of the roundabout’s steam organ; and then between the boards there sounded a liquid chuckle, much like a blackbird’s, and a woman’s voice said—­

“Come, my dear brother, say it out!  The Countess has gone; everybody has gone—­she must have stampeded ’em, by the way—­and as the Jew said, when a thunderstorm broke on the picnic, ’Here’s a fuss over a little bit of ham!’ Well, my dear, there has always been this about Sally—­ a man can swear before her sans gene.  So, to give you a start, how did they take it?”

“If after these years I didn’t know you to be incorrigible—­” growled the voice of Sir Elphinstone.

“‘For ladies of all ages,’ the bills said.”

“‘Ladies!’”

“I am quoting your own bill—­I’ll bet a fiver, too, that you drafted it.  Anyway, I’m rising forty—­though I’d defy ’em to tell it by my teeth.  And since they passed me for a lady—­oh, Elphinstone, it was a lark!  And I never thought I had the wind for it.  You remember Kipling—­you are always quoting that young man—­”