“Come out!”
Archie stiffened. For an instant a feeble hope came to him that this remark, like the others, might be addressed to the dog.
“Come out from under that bed!” said a stern voice. “And mind how you come! I’ve got a pistol!”
“Well, I mean to say, you know,” said Archie, in a propitiatory voice, emerging from his lair like a tortoise and smiling as winningly as a man can who has just bumped his head against the leg of a bed, “I suppose all this seems fairly rummy, but—”
“For the love of Mike!” said Miss Silverton.
The point seemed to Archie well taken and the comment on the situation neatly expressed.
“What are you doing in my room?”
“Well, if it comes to that, you know—shouldn’t have mentioned it if you hadn’t brought the subject up in the course of general chit-chat—what are you doing in mine?”
“Yours?”
“Well, apparently there’s been a bloomer of some species somewhere, but this was the room I had last night,” said Archie.