to do what pleases you, missis,' said he. 'I should be a
bigger fool than I am if I expected anything else.' Then he smiled at
me. 'No! Just go on talking. Ol and I'll drown you easy enough. Quite
short! Back in five minutes.'

The two men placed each his wine-glass on the space on the piano
designed for a candlestick, lighted cigars, and sat down to play.

'Yes,' Mrs Colclough resumed, in a lower, more confidential tone, to
the accompaniment of the music. 'You see, there was a whole party of us
there, and Mr Fuge was staying at the hotel, and of course he knew
several of us.'

'And he took you out in a boat?'

'Me and Annie? Yes. Just as it was getting dusk he came up to us and
asked us if we'd go for a row. Eh, I can hear him asking us now! I
asked him if he could row, and he was quite angry. So we went, to
quieten him.' She paused, and then laughed.

'Sally!' Mrs Brindley protested. 'You know he's dead!'

'Yes.' She admitted the rightness of the protest. 'But I can't help it.
I was just thinking how he got his feet wet in pushing the boat off.'
She laughed again. 'When we were safely off, someone came down to the
shore and shouted to Mr Fuge to bring the boat back. You know his quick
way of talking.' (Here she began to imitate Fuge.) '"I've quarrelled
with the man this boat belongs to. Awful feud! Fact is, I'm in a
hostile country here!" And a lot more like that. It seemed he had
quarrelled with everybody in Ilam. He wasn't sure if the landlord of
the hotel would let him sleep there again. He told us all about all his
quarrels, until he dropped one of the oars. I shall never forget how
funny he looked in the moonlight when he dropped the oar. "There,
that's your fault!" he said. "You make me talk too much about myself,
and I get excited." He kept striking matches to look for the oar, and
turning the boat round and round with the other oar. "Last match!" he
said. "We shall never see land tonight." Then he found the oar again.
He considered we were saved. Then he began to tell us about his aunt.
"You know I'd no business to be here. I came down from London for my
aunt's funeral, and here I am in a boat at night with two pretty
girls!" He said the funeral had taught him one thing, and that was that
black neckties were the only possible sort of necktie. He said the
greatest worry of his life had always been neckties; but he wouldn't
have to worry any more, and so his aunt hadn't died for nothing. I
assure you he k