"Couldn't help hearing part of your sermon, Karl," he said laughing. "Go ahead; I don't mind the Bible and the Sword--it's good for Jack Lacy, too--and that scoundrel O'Hara. Hit us again, old Ironsides. We're no good." And he sat down on the edge of Lacy's bed, and presently stretched out on it, gracefully, arms under his blond head. "You've been catchin' it, Ricky," said O'Hara with a grin. "Karl says that fashionable society is a bally wampire a-gorgin' of hisself at the expense of bright young men like you. What's the come-back to that, sonny?" "Thanks old fellow," said Quarren laughing and slightly lifting his head to look across at Westguard. "Go ahead and talk hell and brimstone. A fight is the only free luxury in the Irish Legation. I'll swat you with a pillow when I get mad enough." Westguard bent his heavy head and looked down at the yellow check on the table. "Rix," he said, "I've got to tell you that you have forgotten to make a deposit at your bank." "Oh, Lord!" exclaimed Quarren with weary but amiable vexation--"that is the third time. What are you fellows going to do? Put me out of the Legation?" "Why the devil are you so careless?" growled Westguard. "I honestly don't know. I didn't suppose I was so short. I thought I had a balance." "Rot! The minute a man begins to _think_ he has a balance he knows damn well that he hasn't! I don't care, Rix--but, take it from me, you'll have a mortifying experience one of these days." "I guess that's right," said Quarren with a kind of careless contrition. "I never seem to be more than a lap or two ahead of old lady Ruin. And I break the speed-laws, too." "No youngster ever beat that old woman in a foot-race," observed Lacy. "Pay up and give her enough carfare to travel the other way; that's your only chance, Ricky." "Oh, certainly. No fellow need be in debt if he pays up, you Hibernian idiot!" "Do you want some money?" asked Westguard bluntly. "Sure, Karl, oodles of it! But not from you, old chap." "You know you can have it from me, too, don't you?" said O'Hara. Quarren nodded cordially: "I'll get it; no fear. I'm terribly sorry about that check. But it will be all right to-morrow, Karl." Lacy thought to himself with a grin: "He'll kill somebody at Auction to square himself--that's what Ricky means to do. God be good to the wealthy this winter night!" O'Hara, lank, carefully scrubbed, carefully turned out as one of his own hunters, stood up with a yawn and glanced at his watch. "Didn't somebody say somebody was comin' in to tea?" he asked generally. "My cousin, Mrs. Wycherly," said Westguard--"and a friend of hers--I've forgotten----" "Mrs. Leeds," observed Lacy. "And she is reputed to be a radiant peach. Did any of you fellows ever meet her in the old days?" Nobody there had ever seen her. "Did Mrs. Wycherly say she is a looker?" asked O'Hara, sceptically.