"The girl's story."
"Does one have to make anything of it? An obvious piece of sensationalism by an unbalanced adolescent?"
"And if I told you that the said adolescent is a very calm, ordinary, well-spoken-of schoolgirl who is anything but sensational?"
"Have you seen her?"
"Yes. That was why I first went to The Franchise last week, to be there when Scotland Yard brought the girl to confront them." Put that in your pipe and smoke it, young Nevil. She may talk hens and Maupassant with you, but it is me she turns to in trouble.
"To be there on their behalf?"
"Certainly."
Nevil relaxed suddenly. "Oh, well; that's all right. For a moment I thought you were against her. Against them. But that's all right. We can join forces to put a spoke in the wheel of this-" he flicked the paper-"this moppet." Robert laughed at this typically Nevil choice of epithet. "What are you going to do about it, Robert?"
Robert told him. "And you will hold the fort while I am gone." He saw that Nevil's attention had gone back to the "moppet." He moved over to join him and together they considered the young face looking so calmly up at them.
"An attractive face, on the whole," Robert said. "What do you make of it?"