OF A PIT THAT WAS DIGGED, AND WHO FELL INTO IT.
Dicky Lever was a hearty and not particularly intellectual youth of the What ho! type (if you know what I mean). He was employed in some capacity in a Government office, but his livelihood was not entirely dependent on his exertions therein—which was, perhaps, fortunate, as his sole claim to distinction in his Department lay in the fact of his holding the record for the highest score at small cricket in the Junior Secretaries' room. He was a member of the Leander Club, a more than usually capable amateur actor, and a very good fellow all round.
The engagement was announced at the end of July, which is a busy time for this country's legislators. The session was drawing to a close, and we were passing Bills with a prodigality and despatch which provoked many not altogether undeserved gibes from a reptile Opposition Press concerning the devotion of his Majesty's Government to the worship of Saint Grouse.
One night I brought Champion home to dinner between the afternoon and evening sittings. At the latter he was to move the second reading of his "Municipal Co-ordination Bill," a measure which was intended to grapple with the chaos arising from the multitude of opposing or overlapping interests that controlled the domestic arrangements of the Londoner. An effort was to be made to bring all the Gas, Electricity, Water, Paving, and other corporations into some sort of line, and prevent them from getting into each other's way and adding to the expenses and inconvenience of the much-enduring ratepayer. It was a useful little Bill; but though everybody approved of it on principle, various powerful interests were at work against it, and its prospects of getting through Committee hung in the balance.
"Now, Mr Champion," said Dilly, who knew that a man always likes to be questioned about his work, especially by a pretty girl, "what will your Bill do for us? I have asked this person here,"—indicating her fiancé,—"but he says parish-pump politics aren't in his department. He licks stamps at the Foreign Office," she added in explanation.
"Tell her, Champion," said Dicky. "Out of my line altogether. Takes me all my time to keep an eye on those Johnnies in the Concert of Europe."
"I will tell you one thing the Bill will do, Miss Dilly," said Champion, a little heavily. (Dolly once said of him, "He's awfully clever and able and all that, but he hasn't got a light hand for conversational pastry.") "How many times have you noticed the streets up about here this year?"
"Heaps," said Dilly.
"They have hardly ever been down," corroborated Dolly.
"Let me see," continued Dilly. "Our side of the Square was repaved in January. Directly after that they took it up again and did something to the drains."
"In March they opened it again to lay down an electric light main," said I.
"In April something burst," said Dolly, "and that meant more men with wigwams and braziers."
"And last month," concluded Dilly, "they took away the wood pavement and relaid the whole Square with some new patent asphalte, which smelt simply, oh——"
"Rotten!" supplied Gerald. (Have I mentioned that he had just arrived home for his summer holiday?)
"Well," said Champion, "the Bill would regulate that sort of thing. It would protect the streets from being torn up at will by any Company who happened to have business underneath them. As things are, practically any one may come along and hew holes anywhere he pleases."
"The police ought to stop it," said Kitty, who has a profound belief in the Force. (I am convinced that if Beelzebub himself were to enter the house at any time during my absence, Kitty would lure him into the dining-room with the sherry, and then telephone for a constable.)
"The police have no right," said Champion. "If a gas company choose to give notice that they intend on a certain day to come and burrow in a road, all the police can do is to divert the traffic, and make the gas company as comfortable as possible."
I was not following this conversation with any particular interest. Being expected to speak in favour of the Bill that night, I was undergoing the preliminary anguish which invariably attends my higher oratorical efforts. But I remember now that about this time Dilly suddenly turned to Dicky and whispered something in his ear. Then they both looked across the dinner-table at Robin, who nodded, as who should say, "I know fine what you whispered then." After that they all three laughed and looked down the table at Champion, who was still expatiating on the merits of his Bill.
I suppose anybody else would have divined what was in the wind, but I did not.
A week later we were treated to an all-night sitting. The Irishmen had been quiescent of late, but on this occasion they made amends for their temporary relaxation of patriotism by resolutely obstructing an Appropriation Bill, which had to pass through Committee that night (if John Bull was to have any ready cash at all during the next few months), and kept us replying to amendments and trotting through division-lobbies until six o'clock next morning.
Robin stayed on in attendance at the House most of the night, but about three o'clock I sent him home, with instructions to stay in bed till tea-time if he pleased. He had had a hard time lately.
I was walking homeward in the early sunshine, marvelling, as people who accidentally find themselves up early pharisaically do, at the fatuity of those who waste the best hours of the whole day in bed, and revelling in the near prospect of a bath and my breakfast, when on turning a corner I walked into a hand-cart which was standing across the pavement. It contained workmen's tools—picks, shovels, and the like. On the near side of the roadway a man was erecting one of those curious wigwam arrangements which screen the operations of electricians and other subterranean burrowers from the public gaze. A dirty-faced small boy in corduroys was tending a brazier of live coals, upon which some breakfast cans were steaming. Between the wigwam and the pavement a gigantic navvy was hewing wooden paving-blocks out of the roadway.
The spectacle did not attract my interest specially, as this particular piece of street had been eviscerated so often that I had grown callous to its sufferings. But I paused for a moment to survey the big navvy's muscles, and to wonder how early in the morning it would be necessary to rise in order to catch a small boy with a clean face. The navvy was a fine specimen of humanity, with a complexion tanned a dusky coffee colour.
I was reflecting on the joys of the simple life and the futility of politics and other indoor pastimes in general, when the big man rose from his stooping posture and caught my eye. He appeared a little disconcerted by my scrutiny, and turned his back and renewed his exertions with increased vigour, favouring me hereafter with what architects call a "south elevation" of himself.
I went home to breakfast, wondering where I had seen the big navvy's back before. I mentioned casually to Kitty and the Twins that Goring Street was up again. They wondered how the management of the Goring Hotel liked it, with that mess under their very windows, and agreed with me that it was high time Champion's Bill, due for its Third Reading to-morrow, became law.
I stayed in bed till lunch-time, and then, rather late in the afternoon, set out for the House, which I knew I should find in an extremely limp condition after its previous night's dissipation. On the way I called in at the Goring Hotel in Goring Street, where Champion lived when in town. I found him in his room on the first floor, gazing out of the window into the street.
I looked out too, to see what was interesting him. Directly below us lay the encampment of the workmen whom I had seen in the morning. They had hewed up a few yards of the wood pavement, and the smaller of the two men was now immersed up to his waist in a hole, working rather laboriously in the restricted space at his command with a pick-axe. The boy was piling wooden blocks into a neat heap, and the big man, whose form was only partially visible, was doing something inside the wigwam.
The roadway was more than half blocked, and cabs and omnibuses, in charge of overheated and eloquent drivers, were being filtered through the narrow space left at their disposal by a phlegmatic policeman.
"Look here," said Champion.
I looked.
"What on earth are those fellows doing?" he continued.
"Re-laying the road, perhaps."
"One doesn't re-lay a road by making a deep hole in it."
"Well—gas!"
"Gas and electric light mains in this street are all led along a special conduit reached by manholes every eighty yards," said Champion. "There's no need to dig."
"Well—drains!" said I vaguely. But I was a mere child in the hands of this expert.
"The drains, as you call them," he said testily, "consist of a great sewer away in the depths, accessible from various appointed places. Besides, nobody in his senses tries to lift earth out of a hole with a pick-axe."
"Perhaps the solution of the mystery lies inside the wigwam," I said.
"No. That is just what complicates matters. When a shaft leading down to the electric light mains is opened, one of those canvas shelters is put over the top. Now there is nothing under that shelter—nothing but the bit of road it covers. The thing seems to be simply a stage accessory, planted there to give the encampment an aspect of reality. Ah, look at that!"
"That" was a small piece of paving-wood, dexterously hurled by the dirty-faced boy, who seemed to be finding time hang rather heavily on his hands. It took a passing citizen in the small of the back, but when he swung round to detect the source of the missile the boy was on his knees again industriously blowing up the brazier.
With an indignant snort the citizen passed on his way, doubtless adding the outrage, in his mind, to the long list of unsolved London crimes. But retribution awaited the youthful miscreant. The phlegmatic policeman who was regulating the traffic on the single-line system happened to notice the deed. He walked majestically across from the far side of the street towards our excavating friends.
"Come on!" said Champion to me. "There's going to be some fun."
We stepped out through one of the windows, which possessed a broad balcony, and took our stand behind some laurels in tubs which lined the balustrade. The street was comparatively quiet at the time, and we were able to hear most of the dialogue that ensued.
"'Ere, mate," began the traffic-expert to the smaller of the two navvies, "just ketch that boy of yours a clip on the side of the 'ead, will you?"
The smaller man desisted from his labours in the hole.
"Wotsye, ole sport?" he inquired cheerily.
The policeman was a little ruffled by this familiarity.
"I'll trouble you," he repeated with some hauteur, "to ketch that boy of yours a clip on the side of the 'ead. If not, I shall 'ave to do my duty, according——"
Here the roar of a passing dray drowned his utterance.
The smaller man clambered nimbly out of the hole and proceeded to grab his young friend by the scruff of the neck.
"Billy," he remarked dispassionately, "this gentleman says as 'ow I'm to give you a clip on the side of the 'ead."
"Woffor," inquired Billy, simulating extreme terror.
The man passed the question on to the policeman, who explained the nature of the offence. His statement was voluntarily corroborated by several members of an audience which seemed to have materialised from nowhere, and now formed a ring round the encampment.
"Righto!" said the man with cheery acquiescence. "Billy, my lad, you've got to 'ave it."
"Tha's right, ole son! You give 'im socks," remarked a hoarse and rather indistinct voice of the gin-and-fog variety, from among the spectators.
Simultaneously its owner lurched his way to the front rank, the others making room for him with that respectful sympathy, not unmixed with envy, which is always accorded to a true-born Briton in his condition. He was obviously a member of some profession connected with coal-dust, and it was plain that he had been celebrating the conclusion of his day's labours.
The smaller navvy, thus exhorted, administered the desired clip. It was not a particularly severe one, but it drew from its recipient the somewhat unexpected expostulation—
"You silly ass! Not so hard!"
Where had I heard that stentorian but childish voice before? Who was this road-breaker's acolyte, with his brazier, his dirty face, and—a public-school accent?
I leaned over the balustrade and surveyed him and his two companions. Then I drew my breath sharply.
Merciful heavens!
The dirty-faced boy was my brother-in-law, Master Gerald Rubislaw, the clip-administerer was Dicky Lever, and the gigantic and taciturn navvy was—my Secretary!
Having witnessed the carrying-out of the sentence, the policeman returned to his duties; none too soon; for a furniture van and a butcher's cart, locked in an inextricable embrace, the subject of a sulphurous duet between their respective proprietors, called loudly for his attention.
Meanwhile Coaldust, who had been inspecting the result of our friends' united labours with some interest, suddenly echoed the question which had first exercised Champion's logical mind by inquiring what the blank dash the two adjectival criminals and the qualified nipper thought they were doing to the asterisked road.
He received no encouragement. Robin was now engaged with a hammer and chisel in cutting a sort of touch-line all round the encampment, while Dicky did not cease manfully to delve with the pick-axe in the pit which he had digged for himself. For a long time they turned a deaf ear to the anxious inquiries of their interlocutor.
But there are limits to long-suffering. Coaldust's witticisms increased with his audience, and at last Dicky turned to Robin and cried, with a really admirable maintenance of character and accent—
"'Ere, Scotty, come and give this bloke one in the neck. 'E's askin' for it!"
Robin deliberately suspended operations, rose heavily to his feet, and cleared his throat. Then he turned upon the alcoholic Coaldust. I strained my ears. Surely he was not going to talk Cockney!
Far from it. He stuck to his last.
"See here, ma man," he roared, in a voice that made the crowd jump, "are ye for a ding on the side o' the heid?"
Coaldust capitulated with alacrity.
"No offence, 'Orace!" he remarked genially. "You an' me was always pals. Put it there!" He extended an ebony hand, which Robin solemnly shook and returned to his work.
Whatever my three friends were up to, it is possible that they might now have been left in peace for some time; for the crowd, seeing no chance of further sport from Coaldust, began to melt away. But a fresh character entered the scene to keep alive the nagging interest of the drama.
My first intimation that something new was afoot came from an errand-boy on the edge of the crowd, who, addressing a lady or ladies unseen, suddenly expressed a desire to be chased.
All heads were now turned down the street, and there, approaching with rather faltering steps, carrying a red cotton bundle and a tea-can, I beheld—one of my sisters-in-law!
Postulating Dicky, I presumed it was Dilly, and I began to piece together in my mind the plot of this elaborate comedy. Evidently Dicky, Robin, and Gerald had decided—for a bet, or because they were dared, or possibly with a view to giving Champion's Bill a leg-up by a practical demonstration of the crying need for it—to dress themselves up as workmen and come and "do a turn," as they say in the music halls, to the discomfort of his Majesty's lieges and the congestion of traffic, upon some sufficiently busy thoroughfare for a stated period of time.
Certainly they were doing it rather well. They were admirably made up,—Dicky was a past-master at that sort of thing,—and their operations so far had been sufficiently like the genuine article to impose upon the public in general,—if we except Champion and Coaldust,—even to the point of securing the assistance of the traffic-directing policeman.
But alas! with that one step further, which is so often fatal to great enterprises, they had sought to add a finishing touch of realism to their impersonation by the inclusion of a little feminine interest; and to that end Dilly had been added to the cast—or more likely had added herself—in the rôle of a young person of humble station bringing her affianced his tea.
And, not for the first time in the history of man, it was the woman who opened the door to disaster.
Dilly wore a natty print dress—probably my housemaid's—with a tartan shawl over her head. She had on her thickest shoes, but they were woefully smart and thin for a girl of her class. Moreover, her hair was beautifully arranged under the shawl, and her hands—though she had had the sense to discard her ruby and sapphire engagement-ring—were too white and her face was too clean to lend conviction to her impersonation. In short, in her desire to present a pleasing tout ensemble—an object in which I must say she had succeeded to perfection—Dilly had utterly neglected detail and histrionic accuracy.
Evidently she was not expecting a gallery. Two highly-interested concentric circles—one of people and one of dogs—round her fiancé's encampment was rather more than she had bargained for. She had emerged quite suddenly from a side street (which I knew led to a shortcut from home) and now paused irresolutely a few yards away, crimson to the roots of her hair, what time the errand-boy, with looks of undisguised admiration, continued to reiterate his desire to be pursued.
The crowd all turned and stared at poor Dilly. Obviously they did not know what to make of her. Possibly she was some one from the chorus of a musical comedy going to be photographed, possibly she was merely "a bit balmy," or possibly she was an advertisement for something, and would begin to distribute hand-bills presently. So far, she merely looked as if she wanted to cry.
It was Robin who saw her first. He immediately stepped over his newly-completed touch-line, and taking the spotted bundle and the tea-can from her hands, conducted her ceremoniously within the magic circle, saying, in a voice much more like his own than before—
"Come away, lassie!"
Dicky looked up from his labours at this, and beheld his fiancée for the first time. All he said was—
"By gad, you've done it after all! Bravo!"
But Dilly did not appear to be at all gratified She merely sat on Gerald's little mountain of paving-blocks, looking as if she could not decide whether to throw her apron over her face and scream, or take a header into the wigwam. My heart bled for her in spite of her folly. The crowd, deeply interested and breathing hard, stood round waiting for the performance to begin.
It was Coaldust who took the lead.
"Tip us a song and dance, Clara," he said encouragingly.
Robin, who had been making a show of unfastening the bundle, suddenly rose to his feet. Coaldust saw him.
"All right, Carnegie," he remarked hurriedly. "No offence, ole pal!"
But Robin turned to Dicky, and the two held a hasty conversation, whose nature I could guess. Dilly could not be exposed to this sort of thing any longer. They began to put on their coats.
"They are going to give it up," I said, not without relief. "About time, isn't it? Do you recognise them, Champion?"
But Champion, I found, was gone—probably to establish an alibi. Perhaps he was right. Questions might be asked in the House about this.
When I turned again to the scene below I found that the crowd had thickened considerably, and that the policeman had once more left the traffic to congest itself, and joined in the game.
"You must tell that young woman to move on," he said to Dicky, not unkindly. "She's causin' a crowd to collect, and that's a thing she can be give in charge for."
"All right," said Dicky hurriedly, "we're all going."
The policeman, struck by this sudden anxiety to oblige, became suspicious.
"All of you?" he said. "'Ow about this mess in the road?"
Robin came to the rescue.
"We'll be back presently and sort it," he said reassuringly.
"Of course," said Dicky, pulling himself together. "Back in 'arf a tick, governor!"
"Don't you go callin' me names," said the policeman, as the spectators indulged in happy laughter.
"Sorry!—I mean, certainly!" said Dicky, getting flustered. (I could see Robin glowering at him.) "We are just going down the street a minute. This—er—girl has brought us a bit of bad news. There's been an accident happened—er——"
"To her puir old mither," put in Robin, whom I began to suspect of rather enjoying this entertainment for its own sake.
This heartrending piece of intelligence touched the crowd, and Coaldust was instantly forward in proposing an informal vote of condolence, which was seconded by a bare-armed lady in a deerstalker cap. But the policeman, evidently roused by our friends' ill-judged and precipitate attempt to strike camp, suddenly produced a pocket-book from his tunic, and said—
"It is my duty to take your names and addresses, together with the name of the firm employing you."
This announcement obviously disconcerted Dicky and Robin; for it is one thing to take part in a masquerade, and another to get out of the consequences thereof by cold-drawn lying.
However, the policeman was sucking his pencil and waiting, so Dicky said—
"You can get all the information you want from the Borough Surveyor."
It was a bold effort, but the policeman merely said—
"Your name, please!"
Dicky, fairly cornered, replied—
"Er—Samuel"—I thought at first he was going to say "Inglethwaite," and was prepared to drop a flower-pot on his head if he did; but he continued, with the air of one offering a real bargain at the price—"Phillipps."
"Two P's?" inquired the constable.
"Three," said Dicky.
The policeman rolled a threatening eye upon him.
"Be careful!" he said in an awful voice.
"One of them comes at the beginning," said Dicky meekly.
"Haw, haw!" roared several people in the crowd, which was unfortunate for Dicky. He was one of those people who would risk a kingdom to raise a laugh.
"Address?" continued the policeman.
"Buck'nam Pallis!" shouted Coaldust, before any one else in the crowd could say it.
The policeman turned and directed upon him a look that would have entirely obfuscated a soberer man.
"I'll attend to you presently," he said in the exact tones which my dentist employs when he shuts me into the waiting-room. "Now then, your address? Come along!"
Dicky gave some address which I did not catch, and the representative of the law turned to Robin. The latter evidently saw rocks ahead if the inquisition was to be extended to the whole party. He said—
"Surely there is no need to take any more names."
"I'll be responsible for the lot," added Dicky eagerly—too eagerly. "Now let's be off! Come along Di—Liza!"
He took Dilly by the arm, and, preceded by Gerald, began to press through the crowd, which by this time extended almost right across the street.
But the now thoroughly aroused guardian of the peace, determined not to be rushed like this, broke away from Robin, who was engaging him in pleasant conversation, and, hastening after the retreating group, laid a detaining and imperious hand on Dilly's arm.
What happened next I was not quick enough to see. But there was a swirl and a heave in the crowd, and presently Dicky became visible, standing in a very heroic attitude with his arm round Dilly; while the policeman, with an awe-inspiring deliberateness which implied "Now you have gone and done it!" extricated himself majestically but painfully from the chasm in the road which had recently been occupying Dicky's attention, and into which Dicky in defence of his beloved had apparently pushed him.
Picking up his pocket-book and putting it back into his chest, and uttering the single and awful word "Assault!" the policeman produced a whistle and blew it.
Things were certainly getting serious, and I had just decided to send out the hotel porter to the policeman to tell him to bring his captives inside out of the way of the crowd, when I noticed that Robin was ploughing his way towards the outskirts of the throng, waving his arm as he went. Then I saw that his objective was another policeman—an Inspector this time. He was a gigantic creature, and Robin and he, slowly forging towards each other through the surrounding sea of faces, looked like two liners in a tideway.
Robin's conduct in deliberately attracting the notice of yet another representative of law and order appeared eccentric on the face of it, but his subsequent behaviour was more peculiar still.
He seized the newly-arrived giant by the arm, and drew him apart from the crowd, where he told him something which appeared to amuse them both considerably.
"Yewmorous dialogue," announced Coaldust to his neighbours, "between Cleopartrer's Needle and the Moniment!"
But it was more than that,—it was deep calling to deep. Presently the explanation, or the joke, or whatever it was, came to an end, and the Inspector advanced threateningly upon the crowd.
"Pass along, there, pass along!" he cried with a devastating sweep of his arm. He spoke with a Highland accent, and I realised yet once more the ubiquity of that great Mutual Benefit Society which has its headquarters north of the Tweed.
The crowd politely receded about six inches, and through them, accompanied by Robin, the Inspector clove his way to the encampment, where Dicky, who seemed to be rapidly losing his head, was delivering a sort of recitative to every one in general, accompanied by the policeman on the whistle.
What the Inspector said to his subordinate I do not know, but the net result was that in a very short time the former was escorting the entire party of excavators down the street, attended by a retinue of small boys (who were evidently determined to see if it was going to turn out a hanging matter); while the latter, to whom the clearing of the "house" had evidently been deputed, set about that task with a vigour and ferocity which plainly indicated a well-meaning and zealous mind tingling under an entirely undeserved official snub.
They told me all about it in the smoking-room that night.
"The idea," began Dicky, "was——"
"Whose idea was it?" I inquired sternly "It was all of our idea," replied my future relative by marriage lucidly.
"But who worked it out?" I asked,—"the plot, the business, the 'props'? It was a most elaborate production."
"Never you mind that, old man," said Dicky lightly. (But I saw that Robin was laboriously relighting his pipe and surrounding himself with an impenetrable cloud of smoke.) "Listen to the yarn. The idea was to stake out a claim in some fairly busy road and stay there for a given time—say, six o'clock till tea-time—and kid the passing citizens that we were duly authorised to get in the way and mess up the traffic generally. If we succeeded we were going to write to The Times or some such paper and tell what we had done—anonymously, of course—just to show how necessary Champion's Bill is."
"Have you written the letter?"
"Yes."
"I wouldn't send it if I were you."
"Well, that's what Robin here has been saying."
"Putrid rot if we don't!" remarked Gerald, who had by this time washed his face, but ought to have been in bed for all that.
"We can't do it," said Robin. "For one thing, we have attracted quite enough public attention already,—it's bound to be in the papers anyhow, now, and that will probably give the Bill all the advertisement it needs,—and if we give the authorities any more clues our names may come out. For another thing, it wouldn't be fair to Hector MacPherson."
"Who is he?"
"That Inspector who came up at the critical moment. He was one of my first friends in London."
"I remember. Go on."
"I was thankful to see him, I can tell you. Well, he undertook to square that poor bewildered bobby, and to take steps to get the road cleared and the hole filled up."
"How?"
"There is a street being mended just round the corner, and he said he would get the foreman of the gang, who is a relation of his wife's, to send a couple of men to put things right immediately. It's probably done by now."
"Then I suppose we may regard the incident as closed."
"Yes, I suppose so."
There was a silence.
"It was a bit of a failure at the finish," said Dicky meditatively, "but it was a success on the whole—what?"
"Rather!" said his fellow-conspirators.
"Our chief difficulty," continued Dicky, "was to decide on the exact type of drama to present. I was all for our dressing up as foreigners, and relaying an asphalte street. It would have been top-hole to trot about in list slippers and pat the hot asphalte down with those things they use. And think of the make-up!—curly moustaches and earrings! And we could have jabbered spoof Italian. But then old Robin here, who I must say has a headpiece on him, pointed out that the scenery and props would be much too expensive. We should want a cart with a bonfire in it and a sort of witches' cauldron on top, and all kinds of sticky stuff; so we gave up that scheme. We did not feel inclined to mess with gas-pipes or electric wires either, in case we burst ourselves up; so we finally decided to select some street with a wooden pavement, and maul it about generally for as long as we could. If we got interfered with by anybody official, we meant to talk some rot about the Borough Surveyor, and skedaddle if necessary. But it all worked beautifully!"
"Where did you get your tools and tent?"
"Robin managed that," said Dicky admiringly.
Robin looked extremely dour, and I refrained from further inquiry.
"Robin's got some rum pals, I don't think!" observed Gerald pertinently.
"Didn't I make these chaps up well?" continued Dicky enthusiastically. "We roared when you passed us at breakfast-time without spotting us."
"Very creditable impersonation," I replied, getting up and knocking my pipe out. "I only hope I shan't have to resign my seat over it. If I may venture to offer a criticism, the weak spot in the enterprise was the idea of inviting your lady friends to come and take tea with you."
"Just what I said all along, my boy," remarked the experienced Gerald, wagging his head sagely. "That was what mucked up the show. Wherever there's a petticoat there's trouble. Oh, I warned them!"
On my way up to bed I flushed Dilly from a window-seat on the staircase, where she had evidently been lingering on the off-chance of a supplementary good-night from Dicky.
"Well?" I said severely.
"Well?"
"Do you know what time it is?"
"I expect your wife will tell you that when you get upstairs," said Dilly.
I tried a fresh line.
"After the labours of to-day, I should have thought you would have been glad to go to bed," I said. "You imp!" And I laughed. There is something very disarming about the Twins' misdemeanours.
We turned and walked upstairs together, and paused outside Dilly's door.
"Good-night, Dilly," I said. "I admired your pluck."
"It wasn't me," said Dilly, in a very small voice.
"Not you?"
"N-no. I said I would come, because Dicky said I daren't, and at the last moment I funked it. (Adrian, I simply couldn't!) So Dolly went instead."
"Then that was Dolly all the time?"
"Yes."
"And she went, just to—to——"
"To save my face. She's a brick," said Dilly.
This, by the way, was the first occasion on which I realised the truth of Robin's dictum that Dilly and Dolly were girls of widely different character.
"And didn't the others recognise her?"
"No. That's the best of it!"
"Not Dicky?"
"No."
"Not even Robin? He is pretty hard to deceive, you know."
"No, not even Robin. None of them know Good-night!"
But she was wrong.