"I do say it unhesitatingly, but mind you, I am only judging from outside appearances. Now, how comes it that such a refined and ladylike girl as that should have such a bounder of a brother? There is a mystery there." Jack Pomfret prepared to argue. "I don't quite agree that he is a bounder, he is not quite boisterous enough for that. Let us agree on a common definition--namely, that he is bad form. That fits him, I think." "And the sister is very good form. You can't deny that there is a mystery." But the young subaltern developed a quite surprising ingenuity in argument. "She just simply calls him her brother," sharply, "but she has told you he is her half-brother by a first marriage--father a gentleman, mother a common person, hence the bad form. A second time, the father married a woman of his own class, hence Norah Burton. Norah knows him for a good sort, if a bit rough, and sticks to him. That's a reasonable theory, anyway." "More ingenious than reasonable perhaps," commented Murchison with an amused smile. Pomfret went on, warming to his subject. "And, hang it all, if we speak of bounders--and mind you, I won't admit he is a bounder in the strict sense of the term--is there a family in England without them?" "Quite the same sort, do you think?" was Hugh's question. "Look here, I'm not going to be impertinent, and ask if you can point to any amongst your own connections, but I know something of my own family. I've got a cousin, good blood on both sides. He's been a bounder from the time he learned to talk, sets your teeth on edge; as some fellow said, every time he opens his mouth he puts his foot into it. By Gad, this fellow Burton is a polished gentleman to him. If George showed his nose in this regiment they would send him to Coventry in five minutes." "As they did that chap last year," remarked Hugh, alluding to an offensive young man who had been compelled to send in his papers, owing to the fact that his general demeanour had not come up to the somewhat exalted standard of the gallant Twenty-fifth. "Precisely," assented Pomfret. "But you were going to give me some views about the girl. Again I say, fire away." "Well, to go back to that meeting in the tea-shop. It was, to say the least, a little unconventional for a young girl to invite an utter stranger to call upon her." "You were not an utter stranger," retorted Jack doggedly. "She had heard who you were, perhaps from the tradespeople. She knew you were a gentleman, she knew your name, Captain Murchison. Hang it all, if you had met her in one of these dull Blankfield houses, and she had been introduced by a hostess about whom you both knew precious little, and asked you to call, being the mistress of her brother's house, you would have thought it quite the correct and proper thing. So would every man in the barracks. Don't people strike up acquaintances in hotels, and sometimes trains?"