Part 1 (2/2)
You must remember that, Barker!”
”I will endeavour to, sir.”
”Sometimes,” said Freddie dreamily, ”I wish I were engaged to be married. Sometimes I wish I had some sweet girl to watch over me and.... No, I don't, by Jove. It would give me the utter pip! Is Sir Derek up yet, Barker?”
”Getting up, sir.”
”See that everything is all right, will you? I mean as regards the food-stuffs and what not. I want him to make a good breakfast. He's got to meet his mother this morning at Charing Cross. She's legging it back from the Riviera.”
”Indeed, sir?”
Freddie shook his head.
”You wouldn't speak in that light, careless tone if you knew her!
Well, you'll see her to-night. She's coming here to dinner.”
”Yes, sir.”
”Miss Mariner will be here, too. A foursome. Tell Mrs. Barker to pull up her socks and give us something pretty ripe. Soup, fish, all that sort of thing. _She_ knows. And let's have a stoup of malvoisie from the oldest bin. This is a special occasion!”
”Her ladys.h.i.+p will be meeting Miss Mariner for the first time, sir?”
”You've put your finger on it! Absolutely the first time on this or any stage! We must all rally round and make the thing a success.”
”I am sure Mrs. Barker will strain every nerve, sir.” Barker moved to the door, carrying the rejected egg, and stepped aside to allow a tall, well-built man of about thirty to enter. ”Good morning, Sir Derek.”
”Morning, Barker.”
Barker slid softly from the room. Derek Underhill sat down at the table. He was a strikingly handsome man, with a strong, forceful face, dark, lean and cleanly shaven. He was one of those men whom a stranger would instinctively pick out of a crowd as worthy of note. His only defect was that his heavy eyebrows gave him at times an expression which was a little forbidding. Women, however, had never been repelled by it. He was very popular with women, not quite so popular with men--always excepting Freddie Rooke, who wors.h.i.+pped him. They had been at school together, though Freddie was the younger by several years.
”Finished, Freddie?” asked Derek.
Freddie smiled wanly.
”We are not breakfasting this morning,” he replied. ”The spirit was willing, but the jolly old flesh would have none of it. To be perfectly frank, the Last of the Rookes has a bit of a head.”
”a.s.s!” said Derek.
”A bit of sympathy,” said Freddie, pained, ”would not be out of place.
We are far from well. Some person unknown has put a thres.h.i.+ng-machine inside the old bean and subst.i.tuted a piece of brown paper for our tongue. Things look dark and yellow and wobbly!”
”You shouldn't have overdone it last night.”
”It was Algy Martyn's birthday,” pleaded Freddie.
”If I were an a.s.s like Algy Martyn,” said Derek, ”I wouldn't go about advertising the fact that I'd been born. I'd hush it up!”
<script>