"Private?"
"Come in! come in!" Minver called to him. "Thought you were in Japan?"
"My dear fellow," Halson answered, "you must brush up your contemporary
history. It's more than a fortnight since I was in Japan." He shook
hands with me, and I introduced him to Rulledge and Wanhope. He said at
once: "Well, what is it? Question of Braybridge's engagement? It's
humiliating to a man to come back from the antipodes and find the nation
absorbed in a parochial problem like that. Everybody I've met here
to-night has asked me, the first thing, if I'd heard of it, and if I
knew how it could have happened."
"And do you?" Rulledge asked.
"I can give a pretty good guess," Halson said, running his merry eyes
over our faces.
"Anybody can give a good guess," Rulledge said. "Wanhope is doing it
now."
"Don't let me interrupt." Halson turned to him politely.
"Not at all. I'd rather hear your guess, if you know Braybridge better
than I," Wanhope said.
"Well," Halson compromised, "perhaps I've known him longer." He asked,
with an effect of coming to business: "Where were you?"
"Tell him, Rulledge," Minver ordered, and Rulledge apparently asked
nothing better.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213