"I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going home quick, so as to be among those present when he starts scattering the stuff. It's quite on the cards that I may scoop that five hundred yet. Once a tightwad starts seeing the light...." "You were saying something about John," said Pat, falling into step with him as he moved off. His babble irked her, making her wish that she could put the clock back a few years. Age, they say, has its compensations, but one of the drawbacks of becoming grown-up and sedate is that you have to abandon the childish practice of clumping your friends on the side of the head when they wander from the point. However, she was not too old to pinch her companion in the fleshy part of the arm, and she did so. "Ouch!" said Hugo, coming out of his trance. "What about John?" Hugo massaged his arm tenderly. The look of a greyhound pursuing an electric hare died out of his eyes. "Of course, yes. John. Glad you reminded me. Have you seen John lately?" "No. I'm not allowed to go to the Hall, and he seems too busy to come and see me." "It isn't so much being busy. Don't forget there's a war on. No doubt he's afraid of bumping into the parent." "If Johnnie's scared of Father...." "There's no need to speak in that contemptuous tone. I am, and there are few more intrepid men alive than Hugo Carmody. The old Colonel, believe me, is a tough baby. If I ever see him, I shall run like a rabbit, and my biographers may make of it what they will. You, being his daughter and having got accustomed to his ways, probably look on him as something quite ordinary and harmless, but even you will admit that he's got eyebrows which must be seen to be believed." "Oh, never mind Father's eyebrows. Go on about Johnnie." "Right ho. Well, then, look here, young Pat," said Hugo, earnestly, "in the interests of the aforesaid John, I want to ask you a favour. I understand he proposed to you that night at the Mustard Spoon." "Well?" "And you slipped him the mitten." "Well?" "Oh, don't think I'm blaming you," Hugo assured her. "If you don't want him, you don't. Nothing could be fairer than that. But what I'm asking you to do now is to keep clear of the poor chap. If you happen to run into him, that can't be helped, but be a sport and do your best to avoid him. Don't unsettle him. If you come buzzing round, stirring memories of the past and arousing thoughts of Auld Lang Syne and what not, that'll unsettle him. It'll take his mind off his job and ... well ... unsettle him. And, providing he isn't unsettled, I have strong hopes that we may get old John off this season. Do I make myself clear?" Pat kicked viciously at an inoffensive pebble, whose only fault was that it happened to be within reach at the moment. "I suppose what you're trying to break to me in your rambling, woollen-headed way is that Johnnie is mooning round that Molloy girl? I met her just now in Bywater's, and she told me she was staying at the Hall."