He pottered about the room for a bit, babbling at intervals. The boy seemed cuckoo.

“Oh, I say, Bertie!” he said suddenly, dropping a vase which he had picked off the mantelpiece and was fiddling with. “I know what it was I wanted to tell you. I’m married.”


CHAPTER XVIII ALL’S WELL

I stared at him. That flower in his buttonhole.... That dazed look.... Yes, he had all the symptoms; and yet the thing seemed incredible. The fact is, I suppose, I’d seen so many of young Bingo’s love affairs start off with a whoop and a rattle and poof themselves out half-way down the straight that I couldn’t believe he had actually brought it off at last.

“Married!”

“Yes. This morning at a registrar’s in Holburn. I’ve just come from the wedding breakfast.”

I sat up in my chair. Alert. The man of affairs. It seemed to me that this thing wanted threshing out in all its aspects.

“Let’s get this straight,” I said. “You’re really married?”

“Yes.”