“I understood,” said Stewart, “that I should find you all. Mrs. Elliot told me I should. On that understanding I came.”
It was at once evident that something had gone wrong.
Ansell looked round the room carefully. Then clearing his throat and ruffling his hair, he began—“I cannot see the man with whom I have talked, intimately, for an hour, in your garden.”
The worst of it was they were all so far from him and from each other, each at the end of a tableful of inquisitive boys. The two masters looked at Agnes for information, for her reassuring nod had not told them much. She looked hopelessly back.
“I cannot see this man,” repeated Ansell, who remained by the harmonium in the midst of astonished waitresses. “Is he to be given no lunch?”
Herbert broke the silence by fresh greetings. Rickie knew that the contest was lost, and that his friend had sided with the enemy. It was the kind of thing he would do. One must face the catastrophe quietly and with dignity. Perhaps Ansell would have turned on his heel, and left behind him only vague suspicions, if Mrs. Elliot had not tried to talk him down. “Man,” she cried—“what man? Oh, I know—terrible bore! Did he get hold of you?”—thus committing their first blunder, and causing Ansell to say to Rickie, “Have you seen your brother?”
“I have not.”
“Have you been told he was here?”
Rickie’s answer was inaudible.
“Have you been told you have a brother?”