Nothing had ever been known to astonish Ipps, the butler. He entered and
withdrew with his charges. After all, he had suffered from Bobby since
Bobby's twelfth year.

'They've done everything they could, short of murder,' said The Infant.
'You know what this'll mean for the regiment. It isn't as if we were
dealing with Sahibs nowadays.'

'Quite so.' Stalky turned on me. 'Go and release the bagman,' he said.

''Tisn't my garage,' I pleaded. 'I'm company. Besides, he'll probably
slay me. He's been in the sack for hours.'

'Look here,' Stalky thundered--the years had fallen from us both--'is
your--am I commandin' or are you? We've got to pull this thing off
somehow or other. Cut over to the garage, make much of him, and bring
him over. He's dining with us. Be quick, you dithering ass!'

I was quick enough; but as I ran through the shrubbery I wondered how
one extricates the subaltern of the present day from a sack without
hurting his feelings. Anciently, one slit the end open, taking off his
boots first, and then fled.

Imagine a sumptuously-equipped garage, half-filled by The Infant's
cobalt-blue, grey-corded silk limousine and a mud-splashed, cheap,
hooded four-seater. In the back seat of this last, conceive a fiery
chestnut head emerging from a long oat-sack; an implacable white face,
with blazing eyes and jaws that worked ceaselessly at the loop of the
string that was drawn round its neck. The effect, under the electrics,
was that of a demon caterpillar wrathfully spinning its own cocoon.