“Quite.”
The deadly pause came on again. Mary looked appealing to her George. George, his right boot in a patch of sunlight, earnestly was watching it as, twisting it this way and that, the polish caught the rays.
It lay with herself to make a thrust through this fearful silence. Upon a timid little squeak she shot out: “Mr. Marrapit quite well?”
“Quite,” Bill told her. “Quite. A little bit—” He checked; again the silence fell.
Mary no longer could endure it. Impulsively leaning forward, arms outstretched, hands clasped, “Oh, Mr. Wyvern!” she cried. “You're not angry with George, are you? He couldn't help sending you to that inn, could he?”
Constraint fled. “Of course I'm not,” Bill declared. “Not a bit. I've come here to congratulate you both. I—”
George sprang forward; grasped Bill's hand. “Good old buck!” he cried. “Good old Bill! I'm awfully sorry, Bill. You're a stunner, Bill. Isn't he a stunner, Mary?”
“He is a stunner,” Mary agreed.
The stunner, red beneath this praise, warmly returned George's grip. When they released, “I say, George, you are an ass, you know,” he said. “Why on earth didn't you tell me what you were up to?”
“You weren't there, old man, when it began. You were in London. How on earth was I to know your paper would come plunging into the business?” The memory of the pains that paper had caused him swept all else from George's mind. Indignation seized him. “It was a scandalous bit of work, Bill. 'Pon my soul it's simply shameful that a newspaper can go and interfere in a purely private matter like that. Yes, it is, Mary. Don't you interrupt. Bill understands. I don't blame you, Bill; you were doing your duty. I blame the editor. What did he want to push into it for? I tell you that paper drove me up and down the country till I was pretty well dead. It's all very well for you to grin, Bill.”