"So be it! We've sold the spare furniture in Gray's Inn,—Morris has developed wonderfully the last few years—and, unless Austria demobilizes within a week, I don't see us paying twenty shillings in the pound. Still, he's thirty and I'm only thirty-one...."
He strolled to the door, but Loring caught one shoulder and I the other.
"Look here, Raney——" we began together.
"Dear souls! save your breath!" he laughed. "I wasn't touting. I've been in warmer corners than this in my mis-spent youth, and while I'm frightfully grateful——" He paused and dropped his voice as though he were talking to himself: "Why, my God! if I can't keep afloat at one-and-thirty with all my faculties.... Hi, let me go! There's Amy, and I want to tell her how ripping she looks!"
He strained forward, but we kept our grip on his arms.
"Little man!" said Loring. "D'you remember the first time I thrashed you at Melton?"
"You brute, you nearly cut me in two!"
"I was rather uncomfortable about it," Loring admitted. "I wasn't sure that you were accountable for your actions. Now I know you're not."
With a sudden jerk he broke away and bounded to the hall, three stairs at a time, for all the world like a child at its first party.
Half-way through dinner Amy turned to me in perplexity, holding in her hand a worn gold watch with a half-obliterated L. K. worked into an intricate monogram.