"Not much, or he'd have been over by special boat long since," said Miss Penny. "We managed it splendidly."
"And how long?" began Graeme, in pursuance of his train of thought, but stopped short at sound of the words, since they bore distant resemblance to a curiosity which seemed to himself impertinent.
But Miss Penny knew no such compunctions. She did not want to miss one jot or tittle of her enjoyment of the situation.
"About six months," said she quickly.
"Well, I should think we"—how delightful to him that "we," and how Miss Penny rejoiced in it!—"could hold them at bay for that length of time. The machinery of the law is slow and cumbersome at best, and in this case, I imagine, it would not be difficult to put a few additional spokes in its wheels."
If his face was anything to go by there were many more questions he would have liked to put—judicial questions, you understand, for a fuller comprehension of the case. But he would not venture them yet. He had got ample food for reflection for the moment, and his hopes stood high.
Never for him had there been a dinner equal to that one. Better ones he had partaken of in plenty. But the full board and the quality of the faring are not the only things, nor by any means the chief things, that go to the making of a feast.
The nearest approach to it had been that dinner with the Whitefriars, at which he first met Margaret Brandt, and that did not come within measurable distance of this one.
XII
"Will you be pleased to tek your dinner with the leddies again to-night?" asked Mrs. Carré, as she gave Graeme his breakfast next morning.