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The first emotion that mingled itself with the sheer terror, was a passionate regret that Hermy and Ursy had not come. They would have thought it tremendous larks, and would have invented some wonderful offensive with fire-irons and golf-clubs and dumb-bells.
Hermy and Ursy ran down the steps into the garden where he sat still yelling with laughter, and still Georgie's imagination went no further than to suppose that one of them had laid a stymie for the other at their golf, or driven a ball out of bounds or done some other of these things that appeared to make the game so diverting to them. "Georgie, you'll never guess!" cried Hermy.
Georgie guessed that Hermy was making a humourous allusion to Foljambe, who was the one person in Riseholme whom his two sisters seemed to hold in respect. Ursy had once set a booby-trap for Georgie, but the mixed biscuits and Brazil nuts had descended on Foljambe instead.
Then he would sit and think ... the Guru, Olga Bracely ... What if he asked Olga Bracely and her husband to dine, and persuaded Mrs Quantock to let the Guru come? That would be three men and one woman, and Hermy and Ursy would make all square. Six for dinner was the utmost that Foljambe permitted. He had come to the stile that led into the fields, and sat there for a moment.
"Tell Dicky to be round at half-past ten," said Georgie. "Yes, sir." "Hurrah!" said Ursy. "Come, too, Foljambe, and we'll have a three-ball match." "No, thank you, miss," said Foljambe, and sailed from the room, looking down her nose. "Golly, what an iceberg!" said Hermy when the door was quite shut.
"The Guru: the Om, of high caste and extraordinary sanctity," cried Ursy. "The Brahmin from Benares," shrieked Hermy. "The great Teacher! Who do you think he is?" said Ursy. "We never seen him before " "But we recognised him at once " "He recognised us, too, and didn't he run? "Into The Hurst and shut the door " Georgie's deeper calm suddenly quivered like a jelly.
"Surely they said it, and now I shall go back to your house, and leave sweet thoughts there for you. And shall I send sweet thoughts to the home of the kind gentleman next door?" Georgie eagerly welcomed this proposition, for with Hermy and Ursy coming that evening, he felt that he would have plenty of use for sweet thoughts.
Indeed he brought up a second bottle tonight with a view if Hermy and Ursy were not softened by the first to administer that also. They would then hardly be in a condition to be taken seriously if they still insisted on making a house-to-house visit in Riseholme, and tearing the veil from off the features of the Guru.
The classes had swelled prodigiously, for practically all Riseholmites now were at some stage of instruction, with the exception of Hermy and Ursy, who pronounced the whole thing "piffle," and, as gentle chaff for Georgie, sometimes stood on one leg in the middle of the lawn and held their breath. Then Hermy would say One, Two, Three, and they shouted "Om" at the tops of their discordant voices.
"Always hit him if he shows his teeth, Georgie. Pass the fizz." "Well, so we got through the drawing-room window," continued Ursy, "and golly, we were hungry. So we foraged, and there we were! Jolly plucky of you, Georgie, to come down and beard us." "Real sport," said Hermy. "And how's old Fol-de-rol-de-ray? Why didn't she come down and fight us, too?"
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