dinner. "Lucky beggar you are, Bob. My mater won't have even a servant
in the place that wouldn't look amiss in a monkey-house. Knows me too
well, unfortunately," and Mr. Moss, taking a squint at himself in the
overmantel, laughed--well enough pleased.

Bob pointed out that there was not so much luck about it as Mr. Moss
appeared to think. "Never seen such a stand-offish little rip in all
my life," he moodily concluded.

"What, isn't she--?"

Bob understood the unvoiced question. "Won't even let a chap have two
minutes' talk with her," he said, "let alone anything else."

Mr. Moss stretched himself along the sofa; rejoined: "Oh, rats! Rats!
You don't know how to manage 'em--that's what it is."

"I know as well as you, and a dashed sight better, I don't mind
betting," Bob returned with heat. In some circles it is an aspersion
upon a man's manliness to have it hinted that a petticoat presenting
possibilities has not been ruffled.

"Well, it don't look much like it. I caught her eye in the passage
when we were coming downstairs, and you don't tell me--not much!"

"Did you though?" Bob said. Himself he had never been so fortunate.

"No mistake about it. Why, d'you mean to say you've never got as far
as that, even?"