“Well?”
Freddie found a difficulty in selecting words. A ticklish business, this. One that might well have disconcerted a diplomat. Freddie was no diplomat, and the fact enabled him to find a way in the present crisis. Equipped by nature with an amiable tactlessness and a happy gift of blundering, he charged straight at the main point, and landed on it like a circus elephant alighting on a bottle.
“I say, you know, about Jill!”
He stooped to rub the backs of his legs, on which the fire was playing with a little too fierce a glow, and missed his companion’s start and the sudden thickening of his bushy eyebrows.
“Well?” said Derek again.
Freddie nerved himself to proceed. A thought flashed across his mind that Derek was looking exactly like Lady Underhill. It was the first time he had seen the family resemblance quite so marked.
“Ronny Devereux was saying …” faltered Freddie.
“Damn Ronny Devereux!”
“Oh, absolutely! But …”
“Ronny Devereux! Who the devil is Ronny Devereux?”