“No, you can’t, Rowton; your personality is too marked. Cut four inches off your height, and take a trifle from your breadth, and give you less strongly marked features, and you might manage the thing; but what disguise could you put on that we should not see Adrian Rowton peeping through? You have no help for yourself; you are in the toils and you must stay with us to the bitter end.”
“I am always forgetting,” said Rowton. “Were it not for—” he stretched out his huge arms as he spoke and indulged in a mighty yawn—“were it not for the angel who will soon walk by my side, I would cut the knot in another way. As it is, you do well to remind me of my cage, Scrivener; I am in it, but even a captive lion has the liberty of the length of his chain; and I shall take mine to the full length of my tether. Five weeks I take; a week to get ready for my wedding bells and four weeks of bliss with the angel of my life. After that you and the devil can have your way. Now I have spoken, and you can take my message to Long John.”
“You have spoken truly,” said Scrivener. “I’ll take your message; I do not promise what the upshot will be.”
“It may be anything you please as far as I care,” said Rowton. “I’ll change my mind for no man; now, help yourself to some beer.”
Scrivener took a long draught, and Rowton ate in silence; his thoughts were far away, and his heart, for all his brave words, felt like lead in his breast.
While he ate and frowned and thought, Scrivener regarded him furtively.
“Where are you going to live when you marry?” he asked abruptly.
Rowton brought his thoughts back to present things with an effort.
“Did you speak?” he asked.
“I only want to know, Silver, if your bride is to come to this house?”