"A little refreshment would be delightful," he observed. "Dusty work, sitting in dickeys. By the way, I got on to Pat on the 'phone before we left, and there's no need to hurry. She's dining out and going to a theatre to-night." "What!" cried John, in agony. "It's all right. Don't get the wind up. She's meeting us at eleven-fifteen at the Mustard Spoon. I'll come on there from the fight and we'll have a nice home evening. I'm still a member, so I'll sign you in. And, what's more, if all goes well at the Albert Hall and Cyril Warburton is half the man I think he is and I can get some sporting stranger to bet the other way at reasonable odds, I'll pay the bill." "You're very kind!" "I try to be, John," said Hugo modestly. "I try to be. I don't think we ought to leave it all to the Boy Scouts." CHAPTER IV I A man whose uncle jerks him away from London as if he were picking a winkle out of its shell with a pin and keeps him for months and months immured in the heart of Worcestershire must inevitably lose touch with the swiftly-changing kaleidoscope of metropolitan night-life. Nothing in a big city fluctuates more rapidly than the status of its supper-dancing clubs; and Hugo, had he still been a lad-about-town in good standing, would have been aware that recently the Mustard Spoon had gone down a good deal in the social scale. Society had migrated to other, newer institutions, leaving it to become the haunt of the lesser ornaments of the stage and the Portuguese, the Argentines and the Greeks. To John Carroll, however, as he stood waiting in the lobby, the place seemed sufficiently gay and glittering. Nearly a year had passed since his last visit to London: and the Mustard Spoon rather impressed him. An unseen orchestra was playing with extraordinary vigour, and from time to time ornate persons of both sexes drifted past him into the brightly lighted supper room. Where an established connoisseur of night clubs would have pursed his lips and shaken his head, John was conscious only of feeling decidedly uplifted and exhilarated. But then he was going to see Pat again, and that was enough to stimulate any man. She arrived unexpectedly, at a moment when he had taken his eye off the door to direct it in mild astonishment at a lady in an orange dress who, doubtless with the best motives, had dyed her hair crimson and was wearing a black-rimmed monocle. So absorbed was he with this spectacle that he did not see her enter, and was only made aware of her presence when there spoke from behind him a clear little voice which, even when it was laughing at you, always seemed to have in it something of the song of larks on summer mornings and winds whispering across the fields in spring. "Hullo, Johnnie." The hair, scarlet though it was, lost its power to attract. The appeal of the monocle waned. John spun round. "Pat!"