"Yes," said Mr. Carmody, speaking, however, as if the acquaintanceship were not one to which he looked back with any pleasure. "I know him very well." "Fine!" said Mr. Molloy. "You see, if I thought we were getting in somebody you knew nothing about and felt you couldn't trust, it would sort of worry me." Mr. Carmody made no comment on this evidence of his guest's nice feeling. He was meditating and did not hear it. What he was meditating on was the agreeable fact that money which he had been trying so vainly to recover from Doctor Twist would not be a dead loss after all. He could write if off as part of the working expenses of this little venture. He beamed happily at Mr. Molloy. "Healthward Ho is on the telephone," he said. "Go and speak to Doctor Twist now and ask him to come over here at once." He hesitated for a moment, then came bravely to a decision. After all, whatever the cost in petrol, oil, and depreciation of tires, it was for a good object. More working expenses. "I will send my car for him," he said. If you wish to accumulate, you must inevitably speculate, felt Mr. Carmody. CHAPTER VII I The strange depression which had come upon Pat in the shop of Chas. Bywater did not yield, as these gray moods generally do, to the curative influence of time. The following morning found her as gloomy as ever--indeed, rather gloomier, for shortly after breakfast the _noblesse oblige_ spirit of the Wyverns had sent her on a reluctant visit to an old retainer who lived--if you could call it that--in one of the smaller and stuffier houses in Budd Street. Pensioned off after cooking for the Colonel for eighteen years, this female had retired to bed and stayed there, and there was a legend in the family, though neither by word nor look did she ever give any indication of it, that she enjoyed seeing Pat. Bedridden ladies of advanced age seldom bubble over with fun and _joie de vivre_. This one's attitude toward life seemed to have been borrowed from her favourite light reading, the works of the Prophet Jeremiah, and Pat, as she emerged into the sunshine after some eighty minutes of her society, was feeling rather like Jeremiah's younger sister. The sense of being in a world unworthy of her--a world cold and unsympathetic and full of an inferior grade of human being, had now become so oppressive that she was compelled to stop on her way home and linger on the old bridge which spanned the Skirme. From the days of her childhood this sleepy, peaceful spot had always been a haven when things went wrong. She was gazing down into the slow-moving water and waiting for it to exercise its old spell, when she heard her name spoken and turned to see Hugo.