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"What's your trouble, Dick?" asked George, speaking, thought the servant, as if this Dick were the first of all Dicks and all men. "I've got a girl in a cab out there. She's worse beat than I am, George. I want you and Liz to look after her till to-morrow." Bruffin turned to his servant. "Lady Elizabeth is in my study," he said. "Ask her to come to me here."
For a moment he hesitated: to ask this scarecrow his business would concede him the right to exist; and the ruffian's undamaged eye and his assured carriage were plain warning against any concession whatsoever. The visitor, therefore, spoke first, even as if he had been respectable. "I want to see Mr. Bruffin," he said. "Not at home," replied Charles, trying to boom like a butler.
"Won't ask, shan't have," said Lady Elizabeth. "Will Sir Randal Bellamy be here to lunch?" asked the girl. "I hope so, my dear. He's with Dick or was sitting on the bed to keep him down till the doctor came. He's like a hen with one chick over that brother of his." And Lady Elizabeth Bruffin laughed. "I think it's it's beautiful," said Amaryllis, with a shade of indignation in her voice.
"George!" she said; and Bruffin took his eyes from Dick, to see his wife leading towards them a pale-faced, tear-smudged girl, with a battered sun-bonnet flung back on her shoulders and a great halo of untidy red hair topping a graceful, weary figure habited in clothes which, in their present state, would have disgraced the woman they had come from.
George took a step forward, and Dick half rose in courtesy. "This is Miss " said Lady Elizabeth, and stuck. "Oh, Liz!" cried Dick. "Beginning an introduction, when you haven't been introduced yourself! Lady Elizabeth Bruffin, you have on your arm Miss Caldegard, daughter of the eminent Professor Caldegard. George, you behold the same. Miss Caldegard, Lady Elizabeth Bruffin, and her husband, Mr.
Oh, George, she's a ripper perfectly lovely, without all those horrid clothes." George took his cigar from his mouth. "I shouldn't wonder," he said. Lady Elizabeth ignored the interruption. "And I believe she's Dick's," she went on. "Who is this Professor Caldegard?" "Scientific coal-tar big bug of the first magnitude," answered Bruffin.
Its rebuilding and exquisite refitting had been a marvel for the magpie chorus of the occasional column. The public already knew more of his new house than George Bruffin could ever forget. But Dick, who never read more of a newspaper than he must, knew only its address and the day when George and his wife should go into residence.
"Like the giver," said his brother. And it was to Randal also that he owed the few minutes which he was able to get alone with Amaryllis before lunch. He went up to Caldegard. "Have you heard Bruffin describe Dick's solo on the dinner-bells last night, you know? Well come and see if he's in the hall now," he said, and dragged the old man away. Left alone together,
"Then I'll wait till he comes," said Dick Bellamy, taking a step forward in spite of the door and the footman's hand upon it. "Impossible to see Mr. Bruffin to-night sir," said Charles. "I'm afraid I must ask you to step outside." His vision of what might be in those bloated pockets was only a little less alarming than the reality.
And when the coffee and George's elbows were on the table, and four of his irresistible cigars alight: "And us," he said, "not to get one little puff out of it all!" "Advertisement," said Randal, "is the false dawn of fame. You, Mr. Bruffin, do not, I believe, need it, and will certainly not get it out of the Dope Drama.
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