said Bob, "a girl like you not get married! Oh, I say!"
And he continued to say for some hours, and proved himself most entertaining company, quoting Baker, who had been a sergeant in the Dublin Fusiliers, and had been very severely knocked about by Jem Mace, and appealing to Mr. Guthrie, who came over with him to get him to look at a book in the mornings, to back him up. He was really very modest and gentlemanly, at the same time that he was exceedingly bumptious and arrogant, after the best manner of the extremely healthy English boy.
And at twelve o'clock he came running to Penelope and Chloe by the river-bank in wild excitement.
"I say, Pen, I say, Pen, there's old Goby coming, and with that miserable rotter who makes poetry. What's brought 'em here?"
"I asked them to lunch," said Pen.
"Eh, what?" cried Bob. "Goby and that rotter, Austin de Vere! I say, Mr. Guthrie—"
He ran off to Guthrie, bawling:
"I say, Mr. Guthrie, here's that poet chap, Austin de Vere, come. Didn't you say he mostly wrote rot?"
And Goby and De Vere came across the lawn together, like a mastiff and a Maltese in company. They made each other as nervous as cats, and couldn't for their lives understand why they were asked together.
"The clumsy brute," said De Vere.
"The verse-making monkey," said Goby.
But tailors could have admired them both. They were perfect. And lunch was a most painful function, only endurable to Penelope because she was on the track of her duty, and to Chloe because she laughed internally, and to Mr. Guthrie (who was really a clever man) because he liked to study men and manners, and to Bob because he talked all the time, owing to the silence of the others.
"I say, Captain Goby, I've got a splendid bull-pup. Baker got him for me, cheap, for a quid,—a sovereign, I mean. You remember Baker. He was a sergeant,—oh, I told you that just now. Do you like bulldogs, Mr. de Vere?"
De Vere was politely sulky.
"Bulldogs, oh, ah, well, I do not know that I do."
He looked at Goby, who was also sulky and feeling very much out of it. But the subject of bulldogs appealed to him, because he saw it didn't amuse his rival.
"I'll give you a real good pup, Bob," he said, good-naturedly; "one that no one could get for a sovereign.
"A real pedigree pup?"
"With a pedigree as long as your own," said Goby.
Bob sighed, and laid his hand on Goby's.
"I say, Pen, isn't Captain Goby a real good 'un?" he asked. "Baker says—"
But what Baker said does not come into this history, as the lunch finished, and they all went into the garden. Goby spoke to Bob as they went out.
"I say, Bob, get hold of that ass De Vere, and talk to him as hard as the very deuce, will you?"
"You meant that about the pup?" said Bob.
"Of course, Bob."
"I'll talk his beastly head off," said Bob.
And this was why Penelope spoke confidentially to Captain Goby before she did so to the poet. She was exceedingly pale and very dignified, but she lost no time in getting to the point.
"Captain Goby," she said, "you have asked me to marry you at least three times."
Goby sighed.
"Is it only three?" he demanded, and he added, firmly, "it will be more yet."
"And I said 'no' because I had no idea of marrying any one."
"That was rot," said Goby. "For, if you married no one else, you would marry me."
"Certainly not as you are," retorted Penelope. "I want you and all men (that I know) to reform."
Goby was not astonished at anything Penelope said.
"I reformed long ago," he said. "As soon as I saw you, I said I'd reform and I did. It was a great deal of trouble, but I did it. Oh, you've no idea how I suffered. But I said, 'Plantagenet, my boy, if you are to be worthy, you must buck up!'"
This was encouraging.
"I'm glad I've had so much influence," said Pen, who didn't quite know what his reforms had been. "But there are other things. This is merely negative. What are you doing to be useful to the state? Are you loafing about on your money? Do you do any work? Are you educating yourself?"
Goby gasped.
"I say, come, Lady Penelope, I've done all that! Education! why, I had a horrid time at school and at a crammer's—"
"Do you read?" asked Pen, severely.
"Why, of course," said Goby.
"What?"
Goby rubbed his cropped hair with two fingers.
"Papers?"
"Anything?" said Pen.
"Well, I read the Sportsman and the Pink Un (at least, I did before I reformed) and the Referee," said Goby.
"Books?"
"Not many," said Goby. "But I will. What do you recommend?"
"I think Tennyson and Shelley would do you good," said Pen, "but you had better ask Mr. de Vere. And do you do anything useful?"
"De Vere! Oh, Lord!" cried Goby. "Anything useful? Why, I was in the army—"
"And now you do nothing. Well," said Penelope, "I think you had better begin at once. Any man I know has to do something useful. You must go to the War Office and ask to be made something again. I think a colonelcy of a militia regiment would suit you. And I am going to ask Mr. de Vere to take an interest in your reading."
"The devil!" said Goby. "I say, my dear Lady Penelope, I can't stand him. Why, you may have seen we are barely civil to each other."
"I shall speak to him firmly," said Penelope, "and it's for his good, too. He leads an unhealthy indoor life. I want you to change all that. You row a great deal still, don't you?"
"Since I reformed I began again," said Goby. He felt the muscles of his right arm with complacency.
"Take him out and make him row, then," said Pen, "and while he rows you can read poetry to him, and so on. It will be good for both of you."
"But—" said Goby.
"Yes?"
"If I do this, will you marry me?"
Penelope shook her head.
"If you do it, I'll think whether I'll marry you."
"Oh," said the soldier,
