"I'm not objecting to his manners, major, and I'm not defending my own," said Spalding. "I'm simply naming him a bounder."
O'Grady took up his cigarette, and turned his back on the keyboard.
"What are ye kicking about?" he inquired.
"Well," replied Spalding, anxiously examining the ceiling, "I happen to know things about him."
"Ye're a gossip, me boy, that's what ye are," cried the major, "and of all contemptible things, the worst is a male gossip. What do ye happen to know about him, me boy?"
A faint smile played across the lieutenant's upturned face; but the impatient major did not notice it.
"To begin with, he's some sort of cousin to a Miss Travers, an English girl whom Hemming is in love with," said Spalding.
"Then you object to him on purely social grounds," interrupted the Irishman.
"Oh, shut up, and let me tell my tale. Social grounds be shot—Miss Travers is daughter of a lord bish-hop. Penthouse is son of a baronet. What I'm getting at is that good old Hemming, just because this chap is related to his girl, has looked after him like a dry-nurse for more than a year. That is right enough. But—and this is not known by any one but me—Hemming backed a lot of his paper, and for the last two months he has been paying the piper. Once upon a time, in the memory of man, Hemming had some money, but I'll eat my helmet if he has any now."
"How d'ye know all this?" asked O'Grady, letting his fat cigarette smoulder its life away unheeded. Spalding touched his eyes lightly with his finger-tips.