“Archie, I’m in the devil of a fix. I don’t know why it was, but directly I saw her–things seemed so different over in England–I mean.” He swallowed ice-water in gulps. “I suppose it was seeing her with Lucille. Old Lu is such a thoroughbred. Seemed to kind of show her up. Like seeing imitation pearls by the side of real pearls. And that crimson hair! It sort of put the lid on it.” Bill brooded morosely. “It ought to be a criminal offence for women to dye their hair. Especially red. What the devil do women do that sort of thing for?”
“Don’t blame me, old thing. It’s not my fault.”
Bill looked furtive and harassed.
“It makes me feel such a cad. Here am I, feeling that I would give all I’ve got in the world to get out of the darned thing, and all the time the poor girl seems to be getting fonder of me than ever.”
“How do you know?” Archie surveyed his brother-in-law critically. “Perhaps her feelings have changed too. Very possibly she may not like the colour of YOUR hair. I don’t myself. Now if you were to dye yourself crimson–”
“Oh, shut up! Of course a man knows when a girl’s fond of him.”
“By no means, laddie. When you’re my age–”
“I AM your age.”
“So you are! I forgot that. Well, now, approaching the matter from another angle, let us suppose, old son, that Miss What’s-Her-Name– the party of the second part–”
“Stop it!” said Bill suddenly. “Here comes Reggie!”
“Eh?”
“Here comes Reggie van Tuyl. I don’t want him to hear us talking about the darned thing.”
Archie looked over his shoulder and perceived that it was indeed so. Reggie was threading his way among the tables.
“Well, HE looks pleased with things, anyway,” said Bill, enviously. “Glad somebody’s happy.”
He was right. Reggie van Tuyl’s usual mode of progress through a restaurant was a somnolent slouch. Now he was positively bounding along. Furthermore, the usual expression on Reggie’s face was a sleepy sadness. Now he smiled brightly and with animation. He curveted towards their table, beaming and erect, his head up, his gaze level, and his chest expanded, for all the world as if he had been reading the hints in “The Personality That Wins.”
Archie was puzzled. Something had plainly happened to Reggie. But what? It was idle to suppose that somebody had left him money, for he had been left practically all the money there was a matter of ten years before.
“Hallo, old bean,” he said, as the new-comer, radiating good will and bonhomie, arrived at the table and hung over it like a noon-day sun. “We’ve finished. But rally round and we’ll watch you eat. Dashed interesting, watching old Reggie eat. Why go to the Zoo?”
Reggie shook his head.
“Sorry, old man. Can’t. Just on my way to the Ritz. Stepped in because I thought you might be here. I wanted you to be the first to hear the news.”
“News?”
“I’m the happiest man alive!”
“You look it, darn you!” growled Bill, on whose mood of grey gloom this human sunbeam was jarring heavily.
“I’m engaged to be married!”
“Congratulations, old egg!” Archie shook his hand cordially. “Dash it, don’t you know, as an old married man I like to see you young fellows settling down.”
“I don’t know how to thank you enough, Archie, old man,” said Reggie, fervently.
“Thank me?”
“It was through you that I met her. Don’t you remember the girl you sent to me? You wanted me to get her a small part–”
He stopped, puzzled. Archie had uttered a sound that was half gasp and half gurgle, but it was swallowed up in the extraordinary noise from the other side of the table. Bill Brewster was leaning forward with bulging eyes and soaring eyebrows.
“Are you engaged to Mabel Winchester?”
“Why, by George!” said Reggie. “Do you know her?”
Archie recovered himself.
“Slightly,” he said. “Slightly. Old Bill knows her slightly, as it were. Not very well, don’t you know, but–how shall I put it?”
“Slightly,” suggested Bill.
“Just the word. Slightly.”
“Splendid!” said Reggie van Tuyl. “Why don’t you come along to the Ritz and meet her now?”