“Ah,” said Drumpipes, placidly pushing his way past Mosscrop through the open door. “Well, give me a drink, Davie, man, and then tell me all about it. Where may the lady be at the present moment?”
Mosscrop came in, and produced another glass with a gloomy air. He watched the Earl seat himself in the biggest chair and help himself from the decanter, and light his pipe, all in moody silence. “She’s gone away,” he said at last, coldly.
“And a good job, too!” remarked the other. “Distrust all yellow-hair, Davie! Have you been in my place and seen what that woman did? There was my Athabaska moose actually torn from the wall, and pulled to bits on the floor! It’s a matter of fifty shillings, or even more, Davie. Considering what you’d already spent on her, I call that heartless behaviour on her part. She must be a bad sort indeed to take all you would give her, and fool you to the top of your bent, and then wantonly destroy property that she knew you’d have to make good, before she took French leave. Ah, women are not given that kind of hair for nothing! You’re well out of a thankless mess, Davie.”
Mosscrop looked musingly at his friend. He smiled a little to himself, and then sighed as well. A calmer temper returned to him. “I don’t take your view of it, Archie,” he said, almost gently. “I have been as sad about it as a child who’s lost its pet, but I’m less disconsolate than I was. Some compensations occur to me—and besides, I have a letter from her. It came to-night, and from its tone——”
“Burn it, man, burn it!” the other adjured him, with eager fervour. “Drive the whole business from your mind! If you’ll give me your solemn word, Davie, not to see her again”—the Earl paused, to invest his further words with a deeper gravity—“if you’ll promise faithfully to have no more to do with her, I’ll forgive you the moose. I said fifty shillings, but I doubt your getting a good job much under three pounds. Well, then, if you say the word, I’ll pocket that loss. Hang it all, you’re my boyhood friend, and I’d go to a considerable length to save you from a dangerous entanglement of this sort. Although it was by no means an ordinary head. Man, I fair loved that moosie!”
Mosscrop’s smooth-shaven and somewhat sallow visage had gradually lost its melancholy aspect. A cheerful grin began now to play about the corners of his mouth. “Archie,” he said with an affectation of exaggerated seriousness, “a moose more or less is not worth mentioning by comparison with the situation which is about to confront you. I know the particular beast you speak of. It was not up to much. The fur was dropping out in patches on its neck, one of its eyes was loose, and the red paint on the nostrils was oxidized. You would not have got twelve-and-six for it anywhere in the world. But if it had been the choicest trophy that was ever mounted, and then its value were multiplied a hundred-fold, it would still be a waste of your time to give it a second thought. Graver matters demand your attention, Archie.”
The Earl’s countenance lengthened, and he set down his glass. He apparently did not trust himself to speak, but stared in alarmed inquiry at his friend.
“As you said a while ago,” pursued David, with vexatious deliberation, “we have been pals from boyhood. My father was your grandfather’s man of business, and was your factor till his death. You and I played together before we were breeched. We went to school together, and I spent more holidays at Skirl with you than I did at home. So I know the ins and outs of your family and its affairs practically as well as you do. I know your sisters——”
“You don’t mean that Ellen has given up her Zenana mission work in Burmah, and returned here to England?” Drumpipes interposed, with a convulsive catch in his breath.
“No; the Lady Ellen, so far as I know, is still peacefully occupied in harrowing up the domestic life of the Orient in her well-known and most effective manner.”