"You would understand, sir, if you were as big a fool as I have been. Good nature, without common business sense to guide it, gets away with more money than viciousness."
He stared gravely at the reclining colonel. "At last I have learned my lesson," he concluded, "and it is this—put not your trust in cads."
The colonel laughed uneasily, and quitted the room without asking for the loan of the proof-sheets. Hemming sat down in the vacated chair. His face now wore a pleasanter expression.
"Thank God, I'm not afraid of work," he said, "but may the devil fly away with that cad Penthouse. How can a blood-relation of Molly's be such a sneaking, mealy-mouthed little cur? Now, while I am lying here winged, thanks to my childish generosity and his beastliness, he is skipping around in London, on two months' leave. Herbert Hemming is done with the ways of lambs and idiots." Jumping to his feet, he went to the door and shouted for his man. A few minutes later, with the candles glowing softly on sword and photograph, spur and book-back, he dressed for dinner.
That night the mess found him more talkative than usual. But he left early, for his own quarters. The groups in the anteroom thinned gradually, as the men went about their various concerns, some to their rooms, and some to the town, and one across the square to the colonel's quarters, where the colonel's youngest sister awaited him. This sister was a thorn in the colonel's flesh. She would not let him smoke his pipe in the drawing-room (though he was sure she smoked cigarettes there), and he heartily hoped his junior major would marry her. The junior major hoped so too, and, with this hope in his breast, took his departure, leaving Spalding, a subaltern, and Major O'Grady alone by the piano.
O'Grady balanced his smouldering cigarette on the edge of the music-stand, and strummed a few erratic bars.
"The other chaps must have suspected something," said Spalding. "I wondered why they all cleared out."
"What are ye doing here, ye impudent young divil? Should think ye'd skeedaddle down-town, now that Penthouse is in London, and ye've got a chance with the lady," cried the stout Irish major. The subaltern's boyish face took on an ugly expression.
"Penthouse—that bounder," he sneered.
"I must admit that his manners are a trifle airy," returned O'Grady, "but the same can be truly said of most subs of this glorious age."