I'm particularly good
at that. Ask Muriel Roscoe."
Jim's frown deepened. "You know of that girl's engagement to Grange, I
suppose?"
Nick did not trouble to open his eyes. "Oh, rather! She took care that
I should. I gave her my blessing."
"Well, I don't like it," said Jim plainly.
"What's the matter with him?" questioned Nick.
"Nothing that I know of. But she isn't in love with him."
Nick's eyelids parted a little, showing a glint between. "You funny
old ass!" he murmured affectionately.
Jim leaned forward and looked at him hard.
"Quite so," said Nick in answer, closing his eyes again. "But you
don't by any chance imagine she's in love with me, do you? You know
how a woman looks at a worm she has chopped in half by mistake? That's
how Muriel Roscoe looked at me to-day when she expressed her regret
for my mishap."
"She wouldn't do that for nothing," observed Jim, with a hint of
sternness.
"She wouldn't," Nick conceded placidly.
"Then why the devil did you ever give her reason?" Jim spoke with
unusual warmth. Muriel was a favourite of his.
But he obtained scant satisfaction notwithstanding.
"Ask the devil," said Nick flippantly. "I never was good at
definitions."
It was a tacit refusal to discuss the matter, and as such Jim accepted
it.
He turned from the subject with a grunt of discontent.
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