"Sent a shot across your bows—what?" roared the Admiral.
"How's the thrush?" asked Marjolaine with an interest she did not feel.
"Peaky. Peaky. That confounded cat next door's been watching him. Seen him about anywhere?"
Marjolaine pointed to where Sempronius was lying wrapped in innocent slumber. "He's quite safe," she said. "There."
But the Eyesore was between him and Sir Peter, and the latter had to twist himself into what was for so portly a gentleman a very unnatural position in order to see him. "Eh? Where?"
"There," she answered, "there, behind the—" she was just going to say "Eyesore," but stopped herself in time. "Behind the Gazebo."
"Oh, there! Well, if he moves I'll kill him!"
Marjolaine wondered. Could Sir Peter tell her what she so much wanted to know? Could he, at least, be brought to talk about what her heart was full of?
"Sir Peter," she said, with as much of her old cheerfulness as she could summon, and with that pretty way of hers which no one could resist, "Are you very busy? Could you spare time for a little chat?"
"With you?" cried the Admiral, gallantly. "Hours!" He vanished from the window and was heard tumbling down his stairs two at a time. I believe if he had been only a few years younger he would have slid down the balustrade. Jim told Jane later in the day he had never seen anything like it.