nd Mr. Lomas wanted me to ask him, and
he plays bridge extraordinarily well. And I thought he would be
interesting. The only thing I have against him is that he never laughs
when I say a clever thing, and looks so uncomfortably at me when I say a
foolish one.'

'I'm glad I laugh when you say a clever thing,' said Dick.

'You don't. But you roar so heartily at your own jokes that if I hurry
up and slip one in before you've done, I can often persuade myself that
you're laughing at mine.'

'And do you like Alec MacKenzie, Lucy?' asked Dick.

She paused for a moment before she answered, and hesitated.

'I don't know,' she said. 'Sometimes I think I rather dislike him. But
I'm like Julia, I certainly admire him.'

'I suppose he is rather alarming,' said Dick. 'He's difficult to know,
and he's obviously impatient with other people's affectations. There's a
certain grimness about him which disturbs you unless you know him
intimately.'

'He's your greatest friend, isn't he?'

'He is.'

Dick paused for a little while.

'I've known him for twenty years now, and I look upon him as the
greatest man I've ever set eyes on. I think it's an inestimable
privilege to have been his friend.'

'I've not noticed that you treated him with especial awe,' said Mrs.
Crowley.

'Heaven save us!' cried Dick. 'I can only hold my own by laughing at him
persistently.'

'He bears it with unexampled good-nature.'

'Have I ever told you how I made his acquaintance? It was in about
fifty fathoms of water, and at least a thousand miles from land.'

'What an inconvenient place for an introduction!'

'We were both very wet. I was a young fool in those days, and I was
playing the giddy goat--I was just going up to Oxford, and my wise
father had sent me to America on a visit to enlarge my mind--I fell
over-board, and was proceeding to drown, when Alec jumped in after me
and held me up by the hair of my head.'

'He'd have some difficulty in doing that now, wouldn't he?' suggested
Mrs. Crowley, with a glance at Dick's thinning locks.

'And the odd thing is that he was absurdly grateful to me for letting
myself be saved. He seemed to think I had done him an intentional
service, and fallen into the Atlantic for the sole purpose of letting
him pull me out.'

Dick had scarcely said these words when they heard the carriage drive up
to the door of Court Leys.

'There he is,' cried Dick eagerly.

Mrs. Crowley's butler opened the door and an