“Well, I imagine it's got about more or less. Is it true, by the way?”
“On the contrary, a complete and idiotic lie.”
The expressionless detachment of Henry's voice and face moved Grattan to mirth.
“That's all right, then; I'll put it about. You keep on smiling, old bean. No one's going to worry, even if it wasn't a lie, you know.”
“Wilbraham will worry. He will, no doubt, take steps to have me excluded from the Press Gallery as a disreputable character. I don't particularly mind. What I do mind is that [it] isn't Wilbraham who's going to get run in for this business, but poor old Franchi. I like Franchi. He's delightful, however many delegates he's kidnapped.”
“Oh, the more the better. A jolly old sportsman. My word, what a brain! Talk of master criminals, ... and to think that I once thought the Assembly scarcely worth coming for. Live and learn. I shall never miss another.” He called to Garth, who was passing.
“I say, Garth, Beechtree says he's not a lady and that Wilbraham's a liar. Spread it about, there's a good chap.”
Garth nodded. He, like Grattan, believed Wilbraham on this point and not Henry, but it was more comfortable to take Henry at his own valuation. After all, if the chap was a woman, whose concern was it but his own? Rather a caddish trick on Wilbraham's part to have publicly accused him. Though, to be sure, he had just been by him publicly accused, so perhaps they were quits. But, poor girl (if she was a girl), she must be feeling up a tree now. She seemed a nice enough person, too; a bit of a fool, of course, but then any one who'd write for the British Bolshevist, that pestilential rag, would need to be either a fool or a knave, or both.
So, on the whole, Henry was not acutely uncomfortable among his colleagues of the press.