half an hour
later. Derek had been attending the semi-annual banquet of the
Worshipful Dry-Salters Company down in the City, understudying one of
the speakers, a leading member of Parliament, who had been unable to
appear; and he was still in the grip of that feeling of degraded
repletion which City dinners induce.

Yet, unfavourably disposed as, judging by his silence and the
occasional moody grunts he uttered, he appeared to be to a discussion
of his private affairs, it seemed to Freddie impossible that the night
should be allowed to pass without some word spoken on the subject. He
thought of Ronny and what Ronny had said, of Algy and what Algy had
said, of Wally Mason and how Wally had behaved in this very room; and
he nerved himself to the task.

"Derek, old top."

A grunt.

"I say, Derek, old bean."

Derek roused himself, and looked gloomily across the room to where he
stood, warming his legs at the blaze.

"Well?"

Freddie found a difficulty in selecting words. A ticklish business,
this. One that might well have disconcerted a diplomat. Freddie was no
diplomat, and the fact enabled him to find a way in the present
crisis. Equipped by nature with an amiable tactlessness and a happy
gift of blundering, he charged straight at the main point, and landed
on it like a circus elephant alighting on a bottle.

"I say, you know, about Jill!"

He stooped to rub the backs of his legs, on which the fire was playing
with a little too fierce a glow, and missed his companion's start and
the sudden thickening of his bushy eyebrows.

"Well?" said Derek again.

Freddie nerved himself to proceed. A thought flashed across his mind
that Derek was looking exactly like Lady Underhill. It was the first
time he had seen the family resemblance quite so marked.

"Ronny Devereux was saying...." faltered Freddie.

"Damn Ronny Devereux!"

"Oh, absolutely! But...."

"Ronny Devereux! Who the devil _is_ Ronny Devereux?"

"Why, old man, you've heard me speak of him, haven't you? Pal of mine.
He came down to the station with Algy and me to meet your mater that
morning."

"Oh, _that_ fellow? And he has been saying something about...?"

"It isn't only Ronny, you know," Freddie hastened to interject. "Algy
Martyn's talking about it, too. And lots of other fellows. And Algy's
sister and a lot of peoples They're all saying...."

"What are they saying?"

Freddie bent down and chafed the back of his legs. He simply couldn't
loo