"Can't you stand behind a chair and let me face you? This is serious."
"Oh, turn round," I said recklessly. "If I hear any one coming I can run. Anyhow, it may be unconventional but I'm fully clothed."
"Are you being warned against me?" he threw at me like a bomb. "Because, if—if you are, it's absurd nonsense. I'm no saint, and I'd never be fit for you to—What silly story have you heard, Kit?"
He was quite white, and his red hair looked like a conflagration.
"It's not about you at all; it's about Russell Hill."
It took him a moment to breathe normally again.
"Oh—Russell!" he said. "Well, that's probably nonsense too. You don't mean to say your people object to your knowing Russell?"
"Not quite that," I said. "But I can't have him here, or go round with him, or anything of that sort."
"Do they venture to give a reason?"
"Toots Warrington."