Nevertheless he is angry with her, and presently rising, he goes away from her to where Dicky Browne is holding high revelry amongst his friends.
Dicky has only just arrived. He has been absent all day, and is now being questioned—desired to give an account of himself and his time ever since breakfast-time.
"It is something new to be asked where I have been," says Mr. Browne, who also thinks it will be as new as it is nice for him to take the aggrieved tone and go in heavily on the ill-used tack.
"Never mind that," says Julia; "tell us only—where have you been?"
"Well, really, I hardly quite know," says Dicky, delightfully vague as usual. "Round about the place, don't you know."
"But you must remember where?"
"As a rule," says Mr. Browne, meditatively, "I come and go, and no account is taken of my wanderings. To-night all is different, now I am put under a cross-examination that reduces me to despair. This is unfair, it is cruel. If you would always act thus it would be gratifying, but to get up an interest in me on rare occasions such as the present, is, to say the least of it, embarrassing. I am half an orphan, some of you might be a father to me sometimes."
"So we will, Dicky, in a body," says Mark Gore, cheerfully.
"I like that," says Portia, laughing. "Instead of looking after you, Dicky, I rather think we want some one to look after us."
"Well, I'll do that with pleasure," says Mr. Browne. "It is my highest ambition. To be allowed to look after you has been the dream of my life for months: