"Do I?"
She did. They had caught him in the high act of creation. He'd been at it since ten o'clock; sitting there, with the blood, he said, beating so furiously in his brain that if he'd gone on like that he'd have destroyed himself. His head was burning now.
"We'll drag you, Nicky, to the top of Wendover Hill, and air you thoroughly. You reek," said Tanqueray.
His idea always was that they took Nicky out of doors to air him; he had so strongly the literary taint.
Nicky declared that he would have been willing to be dragged with them anywhere. Only, as it happened, he had to be at home. He was expecting Miss Bickersteth. They knew Miss Bickersteth?
They knew her. Nicky, for purposes of his own, was in the habit of cultivating, assiduously, the right people; and Miss Bickersteth was eminently right.
The lady, he said, might be upon them any minute.
"In that case," said Tanqueray, "we'll clear out."
"You clear out? But you're the very people he wants to see."
"He?"