"How did you dispose of the man with the umbrella, my boy?" enquired Mr.

Mainwaring.

"Ah," said d.i.c.ky, abandoning Carmyle to his fate, "that was where I did the bright thing. The fellow looked as if he made rather a hobby of this sort of game, and that gave me an idea. When he started amusing himself, I tapped him on the shoulder and said, right in his ear: 'Look here, my man, do you remember what happened to you the last time you were rude to a lady when you thought no one was with her?"

Mr. Mainwaring rubbed his hands gently.

"Well?" he said.

"At that," continued The Freak with relish, "my sportsman went a sort of ripe gorgonzola colour, grabbed his filthy brolly, and slid heavily down the back stairs of the 'bus."

"And what did you do then?" enquired Lady Adela.

"I," replied d.i.c.ky triumphantly, "got up and took his seat and gave Tilly my umbrella!"

"Ha! ha! ha!" crowed Mr. Mainwaring delightedly. "H'm! h'm! h'm! Honk!

honk! honk!" he concluded hurriedly, coughing laboriously and patting himself upon the chest, as his consort turned menacingly in his direction.

"And where did you part company?" asked Lady Adela.

"Well," explained the culprit, "I offered to see her home. She was rather shaken up by what had happened."

Lady Adela nodded her head as if she had expected this.

"I see. And what did the young woman--

"Don't you think, Mum dear, that you might start calling her 'lady'

now?" suggested d.i.c.ky gently.

"--Say to that?" she enquired, without taking the slightest notice of the interruption.

"She said she was n't going home. She was out shopping, it seemed. In fact, she got down at a shop in Oxford Street. I insisted on her keeping the umbrella, though."

"As a gift?"

"No," said d.i.c.ky with a twinkle; "as a hostage."

"And you gave her your address?"

d.i.c.ky's radiant countenance clouded for a moment.

"Not quite," he said. "I meant to, of course; but I can't have been quite my own calm self; for instead of giving her my own address, I asked for hers."

"She gave it, I suppose?" said Lady Adela dryly.

"No. She hesitated badly. I ought to have realised at once that I was not quite playing the game; but I was so mad keen to see her again that the idea never occurred to me. I simply thought she had forgotten where she lived, or something, and waited."

"But finally," said Lady Adela, "the young--lady did confide her address to you?"

d.i.c.ky nodded, and his mother continued:--

"Where does she live?"

"Russell Square," said d.i.c.ky rapturously.

"Russell Square? Ah! I know it. One drives through it on the way to Euston. In Bloomsbury, I believe?" said Lady Adela.

Her infatuated son corrected her. "Not Bloomsbury," he said reverently; "Heaven."

"Quite so," agreed Lady Adela, entirely unmoved. "What number?"

"I have forgotten the number long ago," replied d.i.c.ky, "but I could find my way to the place blindfold by this time."

"Don't you ever write to her?" asked his mother curiously.

"Every day."

"Then you must know her postal address," was the crushing rejoinder.

d.i.c.ky merely shook his head, and smiled serenely.

"No, I don't," he said.

"Then where do you address her letters?"

"I walk round every night after bedtime, and drop the letter into her letter-box. Is it likely I would let a postman touch it? Anyhow, on this occasion Tilly told me that if I asked for my umbrella any time I was pa.s.sing it would be handed out to me. Then she thanked me again, the darling, and went into the shop."

"Front entrance?" enquired Lady Adela swiftly.

"Was it?" said d.i.c.ky vaguely. "I don't remember. Yes, I do. She went round and in at the side somewhere. Why?"

"Nothing," said Lady Adela. "And did you call at Russell Square?"

"Rather! I went there next afternoon."

"Were you invited in?"

"As a matter of fact, I met her coming out, with her father. A splendid old chap! Apparently Tilly had told him the whole tale, and he had expressed a desire to make my acquaintance. A lucky desire for me, what?

He took us both out to tea."

"Where?"

"Gunter's. Said he was sorry he could n't ask me into the house at present, as they had the paperhangers in. After that visitation was over, I was to come and make the acquaintance of the rest of the family."

"And did you?"

"Yes."

"What is the house like inside?" was the next inevitable feminine enquiry.