"M'm."
"I say"
"What, then?"
"What's all this about the Etchingham agency?"
Val Stafford, smoking a well-earned pipe some hours later in the evening sunlight on the vicarage lawn, looked up at his brother over the Chronicle with a faint frown. "Who?"
"Ah! who?" said Rowsley, squatting cross-legged on the turf.
"Jack began on it this afternoon, and I had to switch him off, for
I didn't care to own that it was news to me."
"There's nothing in it at present."
"The duke has offered me the management of his Etchingham property," said Val unwillingly. "Oh no, not to give up Bernard: Etchingham, you see, marches with Wanhope and the two could be run together. He was awfully nice about it: would take what time I could give him: quite saw that Wanhope would have to come first."
"How much?"