“There are cabs,” suggested his brother, delicately. “Or I should be happy to guide you. If you have lost your appetite, there must be something serious the matter.”
“Not at all!” Bridgminster raised his voice shrilly. “There’s nothing the matter worth mentioning. Can’t a man be a bit off his feed without taking a day’s journey to pay two guineas to some damned swindler?”
“One can be seriously upset without being threatened with extinction; and when doctors were invented to keep one fit, why be uncomfortable?”
“I thought you wanted a week’s shooting. Wasn’t that what you said in that letter you honoured me with after you passed those examinations?”
Ordham blushed at this sarcastic reference to the only excuse he had been able to think of when inviting himself to the castle of his fathers. But it must be made to serve. He answered suavely: “One gets so little of that sort of thing on the Continent. Do you go out every day?”
“Certainly. Am I really to have the pleasure of your company on the moors from morning till night?”
“Well—a good part of the day. Remember that I am a bit out of practice, and not as hard as you are.”
“I’m no longer hard, but I go out and potter about. It is a damned sight better than sitting in the house. And I loved it once! God! how I loved it.”
Ordham glanced at him with a fleeting pity. The creature was mournfully without resources. No wonder he drank during the long dark winters of the north. This might be the auspicious moment for the opening of his campaign; he asked abruptly: “Why don’t you have some of the boys to stop with you if you don’t like outsiders—”
“They are outsiders so far as I am concerned. I want no one. That’s all I have to say on the subject.”