“I see. Well, dash it, the thing’s simple. All you want is for some polished man of the world to take the blighter aside and apprise him of the facts. Shall I pop round and see him now?” Claire’s tear-stained face lit up as if a light had been switched on behind her eyes. She eyed Mr. Braddock devotedly. “Oh, if you only would!” “Of course I will--like a shot.” “Oh, you are good! I’m sorry I threw that onion at you, Mr. Braddock.” “Fault’s on both sides,” said Mr. Braddock magnanimously. “Now you stop crying, like a good girl, and powder your nose and all that, and I’ll have the lad round all pleasant and correct in a couple of minutes.” He patted Claire’s head in a brotherly fashion and trotted out through the back door. A few minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. Molloy, searching feverishly in the drawing-room of Mon Repos, heard a distant tinkle and looked at each other with a wild surmise. “It’s the back doorbell,” said Dolly. “I told you,” said Mr. Molloy sombrely. “I knew this would happen. What’ll we do?” Mrs. Molloy was not the woman to be shaken for long. “Why, go downstairs and answer it,” she said. “It’s prob’ly only a tradesman come with a loaf of bread or something. He’ll think you’re the help.” “And if he doesn’t,” replied Mr. Molloy with some bitterness, “I suppose I bust him one with the meat ax. Looks to me as if I shall have to lay out the whole darned population of this blamed place before I’m through.” “Sweetie mustn’t be cross.” “Sweetie’s about fed up,” said Mr. Molloy sombrely. § 2 Expecting, when he opened the back door, to see a tradesman with a basket on his arm, Soapy Molloy found no balm to his nervous system in the apparition of a young man of the leisured classes in a faultlessly cut grey suit. He gaped at Mr. Braddock. “Hullo,” said Mr. Braddock. “Hullo,” said Soapy. “Are you Hash?” inquired the ambassador. “Pardon?” “Is your name Clarence?” In happier circumstances Soapy would have denied the charge indignantly; but now he decided that it was politic to be whatever anyone wished him to be. “That’s me, brother,” he said. Mr. Braddock greatly disliked being called brother, but he made no comment. “Well, I just buzzed round,” he said, “to tell you that everything’s all right.” Soapy was far from agreeing with him. He was almost equally far from understanding a word that this inexplicable visitor was saying. He coughed loudly, to drown a strangled sound that had proceeded from the gagged and bound Hash, whom he had deposited in a corner by the range. “That’s good,” he said. “About the girl, I mean. Claire, you know. I was in the kitchen next door a moment ago, and she was crying and howling and all that because she thought you didn’t love her any more.” “Too bad,” said Mr. Molloy.