"I don't quite see what that's got to do with Brenda," Anne remarked with
a sweet perplexity.

Apparently Jervaise did not wish to point the connection too abruptly. "We
wanted the car," he said; "and we couldn't find him anywhere."

"Oh! he's almost sure to have gone to sleep up in the woods," Anne
replied. "Arthur's like that, you know. He sort of got the habit in Canada
or somewhere. He often says that sometimes he simply can't bear to sleep
under a roof."

I had already begun to feel a liking for Anne's brother, and that speech
of hers settled me. I knew that "Arthur" was the right sort--or, at least,
my sort. I would have been willing, even then, to swap the whole Jervaise
family with the possible exception of Brenda, for this as yet unknown
Arthur Banks.

Jervaise's diplomacy was beginning to run very thin.

"You don't think it conceivable that Brenda..." he began gloomily.

"That Brenda what?"

"I was going to say..."

"Yes?" She leaned a little forward with an air of expectancy that
disguised her definite refusal to end his sentences for him.

"It's a most difficult situation, Miss Banks," he said, starting a new