“No!” exclaimed Nicky, instantly diverted. “Is there, indeed? Then I declare I’m sorry I thrashed poor old Bouncer, for if I had not been obliged to chase after him all this way I must have missed it!”
He hurried off to change his clothes, and made such haste over his toilet that he joined the party just as they were sitting down to table. While the servants were in the room, conversation had to be kept to such harmless subjects as presented themselves to the minds of four persons preoccupied with one burning topic of interest, and was necessarily a trifle desultory. But when the goose had been removed and a Chantilly cake placed on the table flanked by a dish of puits d’amour and one of sack cream, Carlyon signed to the butler that he might withdraw with his two minions. No sooner had the door closed behind them than John, who had been sitting in abstracted silence, said heavily that try as he would he could not decide what to do for the best.
“Why should you?” said Nicky cheerfully. “Ned will settle it!”
Mrs. Cheviot could not repress a smile, but John said, “I own, I wish I had never heard a word of the business. I should not say so, and of course I don’t mean that I would have had the thing undiscovered, but—Well, it is the devil of a coil, and there is something to be said for Ned’s wanting us to be well out of it! If only we had not been related to Eustace!”
Nicky said that he did not see what that should signify, and this observation at once led to an argument which lasted until Carlyon, who had taken no part in it, intervened to point out that neither Nicky’s rustication nor John’s prosiness, both of which fruitful topics had crept into the discussion and threatened to monopolize it, had any bearing on the real point at issue.
“I do not see why I must needs be called prosy merely because—”
“Well, but Ned, you must admit—”
The door opened. “My lord,” announced the butler disinterestedly, “Mr. Cheviot has called to see your lordship. I have ushered him into the Crimson Saloon.”
He stood waiting, holding the door, but as Carlyon rose to his feet, John also got up, saying in an urgent undervoice, “Wait, Ned!”
Carlyon looked at him for a moment and then spoke over his shoulder. “Tell Mr. Cheviot I shall be with him in a few minutes.”