“I say, old lad,” said this young man, “you remember that jolly little what-not you showed me before lunch?”
“The bracelet, sir?”
“As you observe with a manly candour which does you credit, my dear old jeweller, the bracelet. Well, produce, exhibit, and bring it forth, would you mind? Trot it out! Slip it across on a lordly dish!”
“You wished me, surely, to put it aside and send it to the Cosmopolis to-morrow?”
The young man tapped the jeweller earnestly on his substantial chest.
“What I wished and what I wish now are two bally separate and dashed distinct things, friend of my college days! Never put off till to- morrow what you can do to-day, and all that! I’m not taking any more chances. Not for me! For others, yes, but not for Archibald! Here are the doubloons, produce the jolly bracelet Thanks!”
The jeweller counted the notes with the same unction which Archie had observed earlier in the day in the proprietor of the second-hand clothes-shop. The process made him genial.
“A nasty, wet day, sir, it’s been,” he observed, chattily.
Archie shook his head.
“Old friend,” he said, “you’re all wrong. Far otherwise, and not a bit like it, my dear old trafficker in gems! You’ve put your finger on the one aspect of this blighted p.m. that really deserves credit and respect. Rarely in the experience of a lifetime have I encountered a day so absolutely bally in nearly every shape and form, but there was one thing that saved it, and that was its merry old wetness! Toodle-oo, laddie!”
“Good evening, sir,” said the jeweller.
CHAPTER XVI
ARCHIE ACCEPTS A SITUATION
Lucille moved her wrist slowly round, the better to examine the new bracelet.
“You really are an angel, angel!” she murmured.
“Like it?” said Archie complacently.
“LIKE it! Why, it’s gorgeous! It must have cost a fortune.”
“Oh, nothing to speak of. Just a few hard-earned pieces of eight. Just a few doubloons from the old oak chest.”
“But I didn’t know there were any doubloons in the old oak chest.”
“Well, as a matter of fact,” admitted Archie, “at one point in the proceedings there weren’t. But an aunt of mine in England–peace be on her head!–happened to send me a chunk of the necessary at what you might call the psychological moment.”
“And you spent it all on a birthday present for me! Archie!” Lucille gazed at her husband adoringly. “Archie, do you know what I think?”
“What?”
“You’re the perfect man!”
“No, really! What ho!”
“Yes,” said Lucille firmly. “I’ve long suspected it, and now I know. I don’t think there’s anybody like you in the world.”
Archie patted her hand.
“It’s a rummy thing,” he observed, “but your father said almost exactly that to me only yesterday. Only I don’t fancy he meant the same as you. To be absolutely frank, his exact expression was that he thanked God there was only one of me.”
A troubled look came into Lucille’s grey eyes.
“It’s a shame about father. I do wish he appreciated you. But you mustn’t be too hard on him.”
“Me?” said Archie. “Hard on your father? Well, dash it all, I don’t think I treat him with what you might call actual brutality, what! I mean to say, my whole idea is rather to keep out of the old lad’s way and curl up in a ball if I can’t dodge him. I’d just as soon be hard on a stampeding elephant! I wouldn’t for the world say anything derogatory, as it were, to your jolly old pater, but there is no getting away from the fact that he’s by way of being one of our leading man-eating fishes. It would be idle to deny that he considers that you let down the proud old name of Brewster a bit when you brought me in and laid me on the mat.”
“Anyone would he lucky to get you for a son-in-law, precious.”
“I fear me, light of my life, the dad doesn’t see eye to eye with you on that point. No, every time I get hold of a daisy, I give him another chance, but it always works out at ‘He loves me not!'”