Page:Hilda Wade (1900).pdf/73

'That's Sissie's blooming cleverness. She's a caulker, Sissie is; you don't take a rise out of Sissie in a hurry. She knows that if I knew who the other bloke was, I'd blow upon her little game to him and put him off her. And I would, s'ep me taters; for I'm nuts on that girl. I tell you, Cumberledge, she is a clinker!'

'You seem to me admirably adapted for one another,' I answered, truthfully. I had not the slightest compunction in handing Reggie Nettlecraft over to Sissie, nor in handing Sissie over to Reggie Nettlecraft.

'Adapted for one another? That's just it. There, you hit the right nail plump on the cocoanut, Cumberground! But Sissie's an artful one, she is. She's playing for the other Johnnie. He's got the dibs, you know; and Sissie wants the dibs even more than she wants yours truly.'

'Got what?' I inquired, not quite catching the phrase.

'The dibs, old man; the chink; the oof; the ready rhino. He rolls in it, she says. I can't find out the chap's name, but I know his Guv'nor's something or other in the millionaire trade somewhere across in America.'

'She writes to you, I think?'

'That's so; every blooming day; but how the dummy did you come to know it?'

'She lays letters addressed to you on the hall table at her lodgings in Scarborough.'

'The dickens she does! Careless little beggar! Yes, she writes to me—pages. She's awfully gone on me, really. She'd marry me if it wasn't for the Johnnie with the dibs. She doesn't care for him: she wants his money. He dresses badly, don't you see; and, after all, the clothes make the man! I'd like to get at him. I'd spoil his pretty face for him.' And he assumed a playfully pugilistic attitude.