"It's such a tremendous favour!"
"It is."
"But since you're in it, you know, already—and it's so very temporary—and I'll be as good as gold——"
"You'd better!" I exclaimed. And so it was settled that the fiction of Dicky's and my engagement should be permitted to continue to any extent that seemed necessary until Mr. Dod should be able to persuade Miss Portheris to fly with him across the Channel and be married at a Dover registry office. We arranged everything with great precision, and, if necessary, I was to fly too, to make it a little more proper. We were both somewhat doubtful about the necessity of a bridesmaid in a registry office, but we agreed that such a thing would go a long way towards persuading Isabel to enter it.
When we arrived at the hotel we found Mrs. Portheris and Mr. Mafferton affectionately having tea with my parents. Isabel had gone to bed with a headache, but Dicky, notwithstanding, displayed the most unfeeling spirits. He drove us all finally to see the tomb of Juliet in the Vicolo Franceschini, and it was before that uninspiring stone trough full of visiting cards, behind a bowling green of suburban patronage, that I heard him, on general grounds of expediency, make contrite advances to Mrs. Portheris.
"I think I ought to tell you," he said, "that my views have undergone a change since I saw you."
Mrs. Portheris fixed her pince nez upon him in suspicious inquiry.
"I can even swallow the whale now," he faltered, "like Jonah."