'Have some dinner first,' said Toffy, 'and then we 'll go into the matter, as I always do with my creditors. You see, if one has a cook like Mrs. Cosby, there is an element of chance in the matter of getting dinner at all; and another thing is it may be so bad you won't survive it; so it's not much use being miserable before dinner, is it, when perhaps you may be buried comfortably and respectably afterwards?' The presence of Lydia, who listened open-mouthed to all that was said, made conversation impossible, until at last, in an ecstasy of importance at having broken a dessert dish, she placed the wine upon the table and withdrew. Toffy carried the decanters into the drawing-room, where he believed he and Peter would be more comfortable, and having placed them on the table by the fire he congratulated his friend that they had both survived the ordeal of dinner, and then he suggested that Peter should tell him what was up. 'Rather a beastly thing has happened,' said Peter. He rose from the chair where he was sitting and went and stood by the marble mantelpiece. The black tie which he wore seemed to accentuate his fairness, and it was a boyish, unheroic figure which leaned against the whiteness of the marble mantelpiece as he began his puzzling tale. It did not take very long in the telling, and until he had finished Toffy did not speak. Indeed, there was silence for some time in the room after Peter had done, and then, there being no necessity for much speech or protestation between the two, Toffy said merely, 'What are you going to do?' 'I am going to the Argentine next week,' said Peter. 'It seems proved beyond any manner of doubt that my mother paid the passage of a woman and a little boy to go there in the very month and in the year that my brother was supposed to have died, and Cintra or Lisbon are the last places where there is even the vaguest evidence of her having been seen with two boys.' Toffy lay on the sofa thinking, his arm thrown above his head in the attitude that was characteristic of him during the many weeks of illness that he usually had in the year. 'I can't think why,' he said, 'you should go yourself. There must be plenty of lawyers in Buenos Ayres who would undertake to see the thing through for you.' 'Well, come,' said Peter, 'if my brother has been done out of the place for twenty-five years, and if he is a good chap, and all that, I suppose the least one could do would be to try and look as if one didn't grudge giving him back his own.' Probably there is an element of fairness about English men and women which obtrudes itself from time to time to their disadvantage; and Peter already found himself occupying, in his own mind at least, the position of the younger son. 'We will brave the terrors of the vasty deep together,' said Toffy; 'it's no use your going alone.' 'You ain't up to it,' said Peter gruffly, 'thanks all the same, old chap.'