"What's the trouble, Duckie? I've given up trying to fit square pegs into round holes at my time of life. I'm a lonely old man and the secrets of a pretty girl would just about rejuvenate me."
"Yes, you're nice and old," she agreed pathetically; "it's the young who are so cruel."
"The young! Well, I'm... And who has been accusing you of dyeing that burning bingled bush? Show me the woman, for it was never no lady!"
"Uncle Ricky! You've asked Cyprian, John and me to join you. There'll be a Fourth Child too if we come. Will you be quite serious and listen to me for at least a quarter of an hour?"
He noted the tired shadows under her eyes and drew her arm through his.
"You come into my cubby-hole," he commanded.
He heard her out over American iced drinks with fruit floating in them. He was sane and sea-bronzed and unexclamatory.
"Of course, m'dear," he told her in the end, "the position would just about have killed your poor mother."
"I can't help being glad that I have been spared the hopeless task of trying to make darling Mother understand, this side of her tombstone," owned Ferlie. "But I've always been sure that if Father had not been so ill, he would have positively forbidden me to marry that particular Catch of the Season."
"Ill or well, he never knew, any more than the rest of us, that you cared for—anyone else," he reminded her.