"Look here," my brother asked: "did you lock your door?"
"Why, of course not—the more by token that it hasn't a key."
"Well," said he, "mine has, and I'll swear I used it; but the same thing has happened to me!"
This, I tried to persuade him, was impossible; and for the while he seemed convinced. "It must be," he owned; "but if I didn't lock that door I'll never swear to a thing again in all my life."
* * * * *
The young Laird's remark set me thinking of this, and I answered after a pause, "In one of the pair, then, you possess a remarkably clever valet."
It so happened that, while I said it, my eyes rested, without the least intention, on the sleeve of his shooting-coat; and the words were scarcely out before he flushed hotly and made a motion as if to hide a neatly mended rent in its cuff. In another moment he would have retorted, and was indeed drawing himself up in anger, when I prevented him by adding—
"I mean that I am indebted to him or to her this morning for a neatly brushed suit; and I suppose to your freeness in plying me with wine last night that it arrived in my room without waking me. But for that I could almost set it down to the supernatural."
I said this in all simplicity, and was quite unprepared for its effect upon him, or for his extraordinary reply. He turned as white in the face as, a moment before, he had been red. "Good God!" he said eagerly, "you haven't missed anything, have you?"
"Certainly not," I assured him. "My dear sir—"