"I do know your colonel a little," said she. "I met him once at Aldershot, and though he is anything but an old woman, I consider him an old dear! So I am not very far wrong, after all. Now what did he want you for? Sent for you, of course, to have—what do you call it?—a wigging. I'm afraid, Master Bill, you're a sad bad boy, and always getting into scrapes."
"Wigging!" he repeated indignantly. "Not a bit of it; nothing could have been kinder than the Chief. He's the best old fellow in the world! I wasn't sent for. I didn't go on my own account; I went down about Daisy."
Then he stopped short, afraid of having committed himself, and conscious that at the present crisis of his brother-officer's affairs, the less said about them the better.
But who, since the days of Samson, was ever able to keep a secret from a woman resolved to worm it out? As the strong man in Delilah's lap, so was Bill in the boudoir of Mrs. Lushington.
"Daisy," she repeated; "do you know anything of Daisy? Tell me all about him. We're so interested, you can't think, and so sorry for his difficulties. I wish I could help him. Is there nothing to be done?"
Touched by her concern for his friend's welfare, he trusted her at once.
"You won't mention it," said he; "Daisy was with me at Kensington to-day. He can't show yet, you know; but still we hope to make it all right in time. He's got a month's leave for the present; and I packed him off, to start by the Irish mail to-night, just before I came to see you. He'll keep quiet over there, and people won't know where he is; so they can't write, and then say he doesn't answer their letters. Anything to put off the smash as long as possible. One can never tell what may turn up."
"You're a kind friend," she replied approvingly, "and a good boy. There! that's a great deal for me to say. Now tell me where the poor fellow is gone."
"You won't breathe it to a soul," said honest Bill—"not even to Mr. Lushington?"
"Not even to Mr. Lushington!" she protested, greatly amused.