"Let me introduce you to my fiancée, Miss Joyce," I said to Bernard.
He took her hand and bowed over it, looking out of the corner of his eyes at Marjorie.
Little Lockhart gasped. "Babe that I am!" he said, "blind mole! To think that I have lived in this house with young John Carey for so long, the house honeycombed with secret wires, and an illicit engagement in progress under my nose, and I knew nothing of it!"
"Well, you are not the only person, Mr. Lockhart," Marjorie said. "And now I am going to fetch up dinner. Cook is out for the evening. Amy is in the plot. We've got soup—only tinned, but quite nice; there's a round of cold beef; and we will make an omelette on John's fire."
"I'll come and help you carry the things," said my brother, and they left the room as friendly as if they had known each other for years.
"Well, what do you think of my brother?" I asked Doris. I'm afraid my arm was round her waist and I had forgotten Lockhart.
"I'm decidedly of the opinion," she said, "that Commander Carey knows more than enough to come indoors when it rains."
Lockhart here revealed qualities of an unsuspected nature—I had never really appreciated Lockhart until the night before.
"I happen to have, locked up in the cupboard of my sitting-room," he said, "a bottle of claret wine and a bottle of sherry wine. I will go and fetch them to grace this feast."
"You nasty, horrid villain, so you drink in secret, do you?" I remarked.