I thought he was about to go for me, and I stood ready, when "What about me?" came in a dry crackling voice from Arthur.
"Oh, I should put you and me about level," I said, "with the courtesy title as a little extra weight. It is a pity you should be the second son."
"Damn you, Kirby!" he burst out, blazing with anger.
I lifted up my hand and looked at both of them.
"I came in here," I said, "to my own house and find my two best friends, that I thought, waiting for me. A few hours ago I should have thought such a scene as this utterly impossible. I will ask you both to remember that it has not been provoked by me in any way, and that directly I came in you turned on me in the most atrocious and ill-bred way. Of your idea of the value of friendship I say nothing at all—it is obvious I must say nothing about that. Now you have forced the pace I will say this. To marry that young lady—I don't like to speak her name even—is about as difficult as to dive in a cork jacket or keep a smelt in a net. But I mean to try. I mean to use every ounce of weight I've got. I shall almost certainly fail, but now you know."
"Since you have said that," Pat broke in, "handicaps be damned! I'm a starter for the same stakes, and it's hell for leather I'll ride, and it's meself that says it, Tom."
Arthur Winstanley spoke last.
"I'm a fellow of a good many ambitions," he said quietly, "though I've never bothered you chaps with them. Now they are all consolidated into one."
Then we all stood and looked at each other, the cards on the table, and in the faces of the other two at least there was uneasiness and shame.
Just at that moment a funny thing happened. Preston had brought in an ice pail full of bottles of soda water. The heat of the night, or something, caused one of the corks to break its confining wire and go off with a startling report, while a fountain of foam drenched the sandwiches.