"Next month," said I.
"Well, I'm damned," said Jaffery. I asked him why. He did not enlighten me. "Isn't he a lucky devil?" he asked, instead. "The most pestilentially lucky devil under the sun. But why the deuce didn't you tell me before?"
"You expressed such a distaste for female women that we thought we would give you as long a respite as possible."
"That's all very well," he grumbled. "But if I had known that Adrian's fiancée was knocking around I'd have lumped her in my heart with Barbara and Susie."
"You're not prevented from doing that now," said I.
His brow cleared. "True, sonny." He broke into a guffaw. "Fancy old Adrian getting married!"
"I see nothing funny in it," said I. "Lots of people get married. I'm married."
"Oh, you—you were born to be married," he said crushingly.
"And so are you," I retorted.
"I? I tie myself to the stay-strings of a flip of a thing in petticoats, whom I should have to swear to love, honour and obey—?"