“But what have you come here in such a flurry for?” she countered.
Mr. Lomas-Coper gaped, groping feebly in the air.
“But haven’t you heard? Of course not—I forgot to tell you. You know we’re next door to old Bittle? Well, there’s been no end of a shindy. Lots of energetic souls whooflin’ round the garden, yellin’ blue murder, an’ all Bittle’s pack of maneatin’ hounds howlin’ their heads off. So old Algy goes canterin’ round for news, thinks of you, and comes rampin’ along to see if you’ve heard anything about it an’ find out if you’d like to totter along to the Château Bittle an’ join the game. And here you are, lookin’ as if you’d been in the thick of it yourself. Doocid priceless! Eh? What? What?”
He beamed, full of an impartial good humour, and not at all abashed by the unenthusiastic reception of his brilliance. Miss Girton stood over by the settee, lighting a fresh gasper from the wilting stump of the last, a rugged and gaunt and inscrutable woman. Patricia was suddenly glad of the arrival of Algy. Although a fool, he was a friend: as a fool, he would be easily put off with any facile explanation of her dishevelment, and as a friend he was an unlooked-for straw to be caught at in the turmoil that had flooded the girl’s life that night.
“Sit down, Algy,” she pleaded tolerantly. “And for Heaven’s sake don’t stare at me like that. There’s nothing wrong.”
Algernon sat down and stopped staring, as commanded, but it was more difficult to control his excited loquacity.
“I’m all of a dither,” he confessed superfluously. “I don’t know whether I’m hoofin’ it on the old Gibus or the old Dripeds, sort of style, y’know.”
Patricia looked at her watch. It was twenty past eleven. That meant half an hour to go before she could appeal to Carn. Why Carn?—she wondered. But Algy was still babbling on.
“Abso-jolly-old-lutely, all of a doodah. It’s shockin’. I always thought the Merchant Prince was too good to be true, an’ here he is comin’ out into the comic limelight as a sort of what not. I could have told you so.”
“Aren’t you rather jumping to conclusions?” asked Patricia gently, and Algy’s mouth dropped open.