"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?" "They generally find out something about each other before they pursue the acquaintance," suggested Murchison. "Look here, old man, you know as well as I do, you are arguing all round the point. It would be precious easy for the Burtons to say who and what they were, and furnish some proper credentials. If they did that, I daresay all Blankfield would call upon them, and swallow the brother for the sake of the very charming sister." "Well, I'll pump her to-night, and get out all you want to know," retorted Mr. Pomfret confidently. "I don't go so far as to say they will be able to refer us to Burke or Debrett. Decent middle-class people, I expect." It was useless to argue with such an optimist. "You've accounted for the brother, I remember, by your ingenious theory. Well, you've made up your mind to go then?" "Most certainly I have. You do as you like, but while we are on the subject of good form, it is not a pretty thing to accept an invitation, and then excuse yourself at the eleventh hour by an obvious lie." "Under ordinary circumstances, you would be quite right. It has not occurred to you that we were rather rushed into this dinner, then--that we were, so to speak, jumped at?"