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Bultitude was horrified to hear the station-bell ring loudly, and immediately after a cloud of white steam rose above the station roof as the London train clanked cumbrously in, and was brought to with a prolonged screeching of brakes. The others were walking very slowly. At the present pace it would be almost impossible to reach the train in time. He looked round at them anxiously.
"So grave an act of insubordination," said the Doctor, "an act of double disobedience to your authority and mine deserves the fullest punishment. You agree with me, I trust?" The memory of his wrongs overcame Mr. Bultitude for the moment: "Nothing can be too bad for the little scoundrel!" he said, between his teeth.
Bultitude cold thrills. "I suppose that's 'Connie Davenant," he thought, shocked beyond measure as she caught his eye and coughed demurely for about the fourth time. "A very forward young person! I think somebody ought to speak seriously to her father." "Good gracious! she's writing something on the flyleaf of her prayer-book," he said to himself presently.
Then, as the congregation rose for the Psalms, she gave a meaning glance at the blushing and scandalised Mr. Bultitude and by dexterous management of her prayer-book shot the little cocked-hat, as if unconsciously, into the next pew.
But Paul felt the dismal absurdity of his position. Nothing he had said, nothing he could say, short of the truth, would avail him, and the truth was precisely what he felt most unable to tell. He hung his head resignedly, and held his tongue in confusion. "Pooh!" said the Doctor at last; "let me have no more of this tomfoolery, Bultitude. It's getting to be a positive nuisance.
"This letter being so excellently ignorant will breed no terror in the youth." Twelfth Night. Mr. Bultitude had meant to achieve a double stroke of diplomacy to undeceive Dulcie and conciliate the lovesick Tipping. But whatever his success may have been in the former respect, the latter object failed conspicuously.
These, however, were not his only and his principal motives. He had come down to get a sight of Dulcie. "Well, sir," said Mr. Bultitude, with ponderous sarcasm, "you'll be delighted to hear that I'm getting on uncommonly well oh, uncommonly!
Behind that screen, quick don't move for your life till I tell you you may come out!" Mr. Bultitude had no choice; there was just time to set up an old folding screen which stood in a corner of the room and slip behind it before the door opened.
Paul Bultitude would have found it hard to conceive himself lying down in a hard and grimy coal-truck to escape his son's schoolmaster, but since then he had gone through too much that was unprecedented and abnormal to see much incongruity in his situation it was all too hideously real to be a nightmare.
Dick had been perfectly correct. There it was, glaringly fresh and distinct, not large but very deeply cut and fearfully legible. "R. Bultitude." It might have been done that day. Dick had probably performed it out of bravado, or under the impression that he was not going to return after the holidays. Paul dropped the desk over the fatal letters with a shudder.
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