He rubbed his nose with the rim of his eyeglass, looking the most comically disconsolate figure.

’Put black care behind you, Percy!—­buck up, my boy!  The division’s over—­you are free—­now we’ll go “on the fly."’

And we did ‘go on the fly.’

CHAPTER XVI

ATHERTON’S MAGIC VAPOUR

I bore him off to supper at the Helicon.  All the way in the cab he was trying to tell me the story of how he proposed to Marjorie,—­ and he was very far from being through with it when we reached the club.  There was the usual crowd of supperites, but we got a little table to ourselves, in a corner of the room, and before anything was brought for us to eat he was at it again.  A good many of the people were pretty near to shouting, and as they seemed to be all speaking at once, and the band was playing, and as the Helicon supper band is not piano, Percy did not have it quite all to himself, but, considering the delicacy of his subject, he talked as loudly as was decent,—­getting more so as he went on.  But Percy is peculiar.

’I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to tell her,—­over and over again.’

‘Have you now?’

’Yes, pretty near every time I met her,—­but I never seemed to get quite to it, don’t you know.’

‘How was that?’

’Why, just as I was going to say, “Miss Lindon, may I offer you the gift of my affection—–­“’

‘Was that how you invariably intended to begin?’

’Well, not always—­one time like that, another time another way.  Fact is, I got off a little speech by heart, but I never got a chance to reel it off, so I made up my mind to just say anything.’

‘And what did you say?’

’Well, nothing,—­you see, I never got there.  Just as I was feeling my way, she’d ask me if I preferred big sleeves to little ones, or top hats to billycocks, or some nonsense of the kind.’

‘Would she now?’

’Yes,—­of course I had to answer, and by the time I’d answered the chance was lost.’  Percy was polishing his eye-glass.  ’I tried to get there so many times, and she choked me off so often, that I can’t help thinking that she suspected what it was that I was after.’

‘You think she did?’

’She must have done.  Once I followed her down Piccadilly, and chivied her into a glove shop in the Burlington Arcade.  I meant to propose to her in there,—­I hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night through dreaming of her, and I was just about desperate.’

‘And did you propose?’

’The girl behind the counter made me buy a dozen pairs of gloves instead.  They turned out to be three sizes too large for me when they came home.  I believe she thought I’d gone to spoon the glove girl,—­she went out and left me there.  That girl loaded me with all sorts of things when she was gone,—­I couldn’t get away.  She held me with her blessed eye.  I believe it was a glass one.’