II Hugo was not in the Carmody Arms. He was standing on the bridge over the Skirme, his elbows resting on the parapet, his eyes fixed on the flowing water. For a suitor recently accepted by--presumably--the girl of his heart, he looked oddly downcast. His eye, when he turned at the sound of his name, was the eye of a fish that has had trouble. "Hullo, John, old man," he said in a toneless voice. John began to feel his way into the subject he had come to discuss. "Nice day," he said. "What is?" said Hugo. "This." "I'm glad you think so. John," said Hugo, attaching himself sombrely to his cousin's coat sleeve, "I want your advice. In many ways you're a stodgy sort of a Gawd-help-us, but you're a level-headed kind of old bird, at that, and I want your advice. The fact is, John, believe me or believe me not, I've made an ass of myself." "How's that?" "I've gone and got engaged to Pat." Having exploded this bombshell, Hugo leaned against the parapet and gazed at his cousin with a certain moody satisfaction. "Yes?" said John. "You don't seem much surprised," said Hugo, disappointed. "Oh, I'm astonished," said John. "How did it happen?" Hugo, who had released his companion's coat sleeve, now reached out for it again. The feel of it seemed to inspire him. "It was that bloke Bessemer's wedding that started the whole trouble," he said. "You remember I told you about Ronnie's man, Bessemer." "I remember you said he had remarkable ears." "Like airplane wings. Nevertheless, in spite of that, he got married yesterday. The wedding took place from Ronnie's flat." "Yes?" Hugo sighed. "Well, you know how it is, John, old man. There's something about a wedding, even the wedding of a gargoyle like Bessemer, that seems to breed sentimentality. It may have been the claret cup. I warned Ronnie from the first against the claret cup. A noxious drink. But he said--with a good deal of truth, no doubt--that if I thought he was going to waste champagne on a blighter who was leaving him in the lurch without a tear I was jolly well mistaken. So we more or less bathed in claret cup at the subsequent festivities, and it wasn't more than an hour afterward when something seemed to come over me all in a rush." "What?" "Well, a sort of aching, poignant feeling. All the sorrows of the world seemed to be laid out in front of me in a solid mass." "That sounds more like lobster." "It may have been the lobster," conceded Hugo. "But I maintain that the claret cup helped. Well, I just sat there, bursting with pity for the whole human race, and then suddenly it all seemed in a flash, as it were, to become concentrated on Pat." "You burst with pity for Pat?"