He was the admiration and the wonder and the paragon and the criterion
of his friend Billy Fairfax, who had trailed his meteoric course through
college and who, when the Brian Boru went down, was accompanying him on
his most recent adventure - a globe-trotting trip in the interests of a
moving-picture company. Socially they made an excellent team. For Billy
contributed money, birth, breeding, and position to augment Honey's
initiative, enterprise, audacity, and charm. Billy Fairfax offered other
contrasts quite as striking. On his physical side, he was shapelessly
strong and hopelessly ugly, a big, shock-headed blond. On his personal
side "mere mutt-man" was the way one girl put it, "too much of a damned
gentleman" Honey Smith said to him regularly.

Billy Fairfax was not, however, without charm of a certain shy, evasive,
slow-going kind; and he was not without his own distinction. His huge
fortune had permitted him to cultivate many expensive sports and
sporting tastes. His studs and kennels and strings of polo ponies were
famous. He was a polo-player well above the average and an aviator not
far below it.

Pete Murphy, the fifth of the group, was the delight of them all. The
carriage of a bantam rooster, the courage of a lion, more brain than he
could stagger under; a disposition fiery, mercurial, sanguine, witty; he
was made, according to Billy Fairfax's dictum, of "wire and brass
tacks," and he possessed what Honey Smith (who himself had no mean gift
in that direction) called "the gift of gab." He lived by writing
magazine articles. Also he wrote fiction, verse, and drama. Also he was
a painter. Also he was a musician. In short, he was an Irishman.

Artistically, he had all the perception of the Celt plus the acquired