“Why? What’s the matter?”
“I’m engaged,” groaned his lordship.
“Engaged? I wish you’d explain. What on earth’s wrong with you! Don’t you want to be engaged? What’s your——”
He broke off as a sudden, awful suspicion, dawned upon him. “Who is she?” he cried.
He gripped the stricken peer’s shoulder and shook it savagely. Unfortunately he selected the precise moment when the latter was in the act of calming his quivering nerve-centres with a gulp of brandy and soda, and for a space of some two minutes it seemed as if the engagement would be broken off by the premature extinction of the Dreever line. A long and painful fit of coughing, however, ended with his lordship still alive and on the road to recovery.
He eyed Jimmy reproachfully, but Jimmy was in no mood for apologies.
“Who is she?” he kept demanding. “What’s her name?”
“Might have killed me,” grumbled the convalescent.
“Who is she?”
“What? Why, Miss McEachern.”