just come in sight of the lake, and I was casting a keen eye over the ground to see that everything was in order. Everything appeared to be as arranged. The kid Oswald was hunched up on the bridge; and, as Bingo wasn’t visible, I took it that he had got into position. My watch made it two minutes after the hour.

“Eh?” I said. “Oh, ah, yes. I was just thinking.”

“You said you had something important to say to me.”

“Absolutely!” I had decided to open the proceedings by sort of paving the way for young Bingo. I mean to say, without actually mentioning his name, I wanted to prepare the girl’s mind for the fact that, surprising as it might seem, there was someone who had long loved her from afar and all that sort of rot. “It’s like this,” I said. “It may sound rummy and all that, but there’s somebody who’s frightfully in love with you and so forth—a friend of mine, you know.”

“Oh, a friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

She gave a kind of a laugh.

“Well, why doesn’t he tell me so?”

“Well, you see, that’s the sort of chap he is. Kind of shrinking, diffident kind of fellow. Hasn’t got the nerve. Thinks you so much above him, don’t you know. Looks on you as a sort of goddess. Worships the ground you tread on, but can’t whack up the ginger to tell you so.”

“This is very interesting.”

“Yes. He’s not a bad chap, you know, in his way. Rather an ass, perhaps, but well-meaning. Well, that’s the posish. You might just bear it in mind, what?”

“How funny you are!”

She chucked back her head and laughed with considerable vim. She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel. It didn’t sound over-musical to me, and on the kid Oswald it appeared to jar not a little. He gazed at us with a good deal of dislike.

“I wish the dickens you wouldn’t make that row,” he said. “Scaring all the fish away.”

It broke the spell a bit. Honoria changed the subject.

“I do wish Oswald wouldn’t sit on the bridge like that,” she said. “I’m sure it isn’t safe. He might easily fall in.”

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