“You should frivol with us,” said Mr. Bredon. “If the lay-out lays you out, rejuvenate your soul in Roof Revels with Copy-writers. I bagged a starling this morning.”
“What do you mean, bagged a starling?”
“Father, I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little catapult. But if it’s found,” added Mr. Bredon earnestly, “I expect they will lay the blame on the canteen cat.”
“-apult,” said Mr. Harris. He looked at Mr. Tallboy to see if this play upon words had been appreciated, and seeing that that gentleman looked more than ordinarily blank and unreceptive, he proceeded to rub it in.
“Like the old joke, eh? ‘O take a pill! O take a pill! O take a pilgrim home!’”
“What do you say?” asked Mr. Tallboy, frowning in the effort to concentrate.”
“O blame the cat, don’t you see,” persisted Mr. Harris, “O blame the cat! O blame the catapult! Got me?”
“Ha, ha! very good!” said Mr. Tallboy.
“There was another,” Mr. Harris went on, ‘Oh for a man! Oh for a-”
“Are you a good hand with a catapult, Tallboy?” inquired Mr. Bredon, rather hastily, as though he feared something might explode unless he caused a diversion.
“I haven’t the eye for it.” Mr. Tallboy shook his head, regretfully.
“Eye for what?” demanded Miss Rossiter.
“For a catapult.”
“Oh, go on, Mr. Tallboy! And you such a tennis champion!”
“It’s not quite the same thing,” explained Mr. Tallboy.
“A games’ eye is a games’ eye, surely!”
“An eye’s an eye for a’ that,” said Mr. Harris rather vaguely. “Ever done anything at darts, Mr. Bredon?”
“I won the pewter pot three years running at the Cow and Pump,” replied that gentleman, proudly. “With right of free warren-I mean free beer every Friday night for a twelvemonth. It came rather expensive, though, because every time I had my free pot of beer I had to stand about fifteen to the pals who came to see me drink it. So I withdrew myself from the competition and confined myself to giving exhibition displays.”
“What’s that about darts?”
Mr. Daniels had roamed into view. “Have you ever seen young Binns throw darts? Really quite remarkable.”
“I haven’t yet the pleasure of Mr. Binns’ acquaintance,” acknowledged Mr. Bredon. “I am ashamed to say that there are still members of this great staff unknown to me except by sight. Which, of all the merry faces I see flitting about the passages, is the youthful Mr. Binns?”
“You wouldn’t have seen him, I don’t expect,” said Miss Rossiter. “He helps Mr. Spender in the Vouchers. Go along there one day and ask for a back number of some obscure periodical, and Mr. Binns will be sent to fetch it. He’s a terrific dab at any sort of game.”
“Except bridge,” said Mr. Daniels, with a groan. “I drew him one night at a tournament-you remember, Miss Rossiter, the last Christmas party but two, and he went three no trumps on the ace of spades singleton, five hearts to the king, queen and-”
“What a memory you have, Mr. Daniels! You’ll never forget or forgive those three no trumps. Poor Mr. Binns! He must miss Mr. Dean-they often lunched together.”
Mr. Bredon seemed to pay more attention to this remark than it deserved, for he looked at Miss Rossiter as though he were about to ask her a question, but the conclave was broken up by the arrival of Mrs. Johnson, who, having served out the tea and handed the teapot over to the canteen cook, felt that the time had come for her to join in the social side of the event. She was a large, personable widow, with a surprising quantity of auburn hair and a high complexion, and being built on those majestic lines was, inevitably and unrelentingly, arch.
“Well, well,” she said, brightly. “And how is Mr. Daniels today?”
Mr. Daniels, having suffered this method of address for nearly twelve years, bore up tolerably well under it, and merely replied that he was quite well.
“This is the first time you have been at one of our monthly gatherings, Mr. Bredon,” pursued the widow. “You’re supposed to make the acquaintance of the rest of the staff, you know, but I see you haven’t strayed far from your own department. Ah, well, when we’re fat and forty”-here Mrs. Johnson giggled-“we can’t expect the same attention from the gentlemen that these young things get.”
“I assure you,” said Mr. Bredon, “that nothing but an extreme awe of your authority has hitherto prevented me from forcing my impertinent attentions upon you. To tell you the truth, I’ve been misbehaving myself, and I expect you would give me a rap over the knuckles if you knew what I’d been doing.”
“Not unless you’ve been upsetting my boys,” returned Mrs. Johnson, “the young scamps! Take your eye off them a minute and they’re up to their games. Would you believe it, that little wretch they call Ginger brought a Yo-Yo to the office with him and broke the window in the boys’ room practising ‘Round the World’ in his lunch-hour. That’ll come out of young Ginger’s wages.”
“I’ll pay up when I break a window,” promised Mr. Bredon, handsomely. “I shall say: I did it with my little catapult-”
“Catapult!” cried Mrs. Johnson, “I’ve had quite enough of catapults. There was that Ginger, not a month ago-Let me catch you at it once again, I said.”
Mr. Bredon, with raised and twisted eyebrows, exhibited his toy.
“You’ve been at my desk, Mr. Bredon!”
“Indeed I have not; I shouldn’t dare,” protested the accused. “I’m far too pure-minded to burgle a lady’s desk.”
“I should hope so,” said Mr. Daniels. “Mrs. Johnson keeps all her letters from her admirers in that desk.”
“That’s quite enough of that, Mr. Daniels. But I really did think for a moment that was Ginger’s catapult, but I see now it’s a bit different.”
“Have you still got that poor child’s catapult? You are a hard-hearted woman.”
“I have to be.”
“That’s bad luck on all of us,” said Mr. Bredon. “Look here, let the kid have it back. I like that boy. He says ‘Morning, sir,’ in a tone that fills me with a pleasant conceit of myself. And I like red hair. To oblige me, Mrs. Johnson, let the child have his lethal weapon.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Johnson, yielding, “I’ll hand it over to you, Mr. Bredon, and if any more windows are broken it’s you will be responsible. Come along to me when the tea-party’s over. Now I must go and talk to that other new member.”
She bustled away, no doubt to tell Mr. Newbolt, Mr. Hamperley, Mr. Sidebotham, Miss Griggs and Mr. Woodhurst about the childish proclivities of copy-writers. The tea-party dwindled to its hour’s end, when Mr. Pym, glancing at the Greenwich-controlled electric clock-face on the wall, bustled to the door, casting vague smiles at all and sundry as he went. The chosen twenty, released from durance, surged after him into the corridor. Mrs. Johnson found Mr. Bredon’s slim form drooping deprecatingly beside her.
“Shall I come for the catapult before we both forget about it?”
“Certainly, if you like; you are in a hurry,” said Mrs. Johnson.
“It promises me a few more minutes in your company,” said Mr. Bredon.
“You are a flatterer,” said Mrs. Johnson, not altogether ill-pleased. After all, she was not very much older than Mr. Bredon, and a plump widowhood has its appeal. She led the way upstairs to the Dispatching department, took a bunch of keys from her handbag and opened a drawer.
“You’re careful with your keys, I see. Secrets in the drawer and all that, I suppose?”
“Stamp-money, that’s all,” said Mrs. Johnson, “and any odds and ends I have to confiscate. Not but what anybody might get at my keys if they wanted to, because I often leave my bag on the desk for a few moments. But we’ve got a very honest set of boys here.”