"Slacker! Waster! You ought to have been out riding off the effects. You were jolly well going it last night. And you jolly well look it this morning. Good thing I'm free on the fifteenth to haul you away from all this".
Perhaps because they had first met at an age when eighteen months seemed an immense gap between them, Lance had never quite dropped the elder-brotherly attitude of St Rupert days.
"Yes—a rare good thing——" Roy echoed, and stopped with a visible jerk.
"Well, what's the hitch? Hit out, man. Don't mind me."
There was a flash of impatience, an undernote of foreknowledge, in his tone, that made confession at once easier and harder for Roy.
"I suppose it was—pretty glaring", he admitted, twitching his head away from those strong friendly fingers. "The fact is—we're ... as good as engaged——"
Again he broke off, arrested by the mask-like stillness of Desmond's face.
"Congrats, old man", he said at last, in a level tone. "I got the impression ... a few weeks ago, you were not ready for the plunge. But you've done it—in record time." A pause. Roy sat there tongue-tied—unreasonably angry with himself and Rose. "Why 'as good as...?' Is it to be ... not official?"
"Only till to-morrow. You see, it all came ... rather in a rush. She thought ... we thought ... better talk things over first between ourselves. After all...."
"Yes—after all," Lance took him up. "You do know a precious lot about each other! How much ... does she know ... about you?"