"Since you have said that," Pat broke in, "handicaps be damned! I'm a starter for the same stakes, and it's hell for leather I'll ride, and it's meself that says it, Tom."
"I'm a fellow of a good many ambitions," he said quietly, "though I've never bothered you chaps with them. Now they are all consolidated into one."
Then we all stood and looked at each other, the cards on the table, and in the faces of the other two at least there was uneasiness and shame.
Just at that moment a funny thing happened. Preston had brought in an ice pail full of bottles of soda water. The heat of the night, or something, caused one of the corks to break its confining wire and go off with a startling report, while a fountain of foam drenched the sandwiches.
"Me kingdom for a drink!" said Pat. "Oh, the sweet, blessed, gurgling sound!" and striding to the table he mixed a gargantuan peg.
Arthur and I met behind Pat's back and he held out his hand to me, biting his lower lip.
"We've behaved abominably, old soul," he said.
The big guardsman turned round and raised his glass on high.
"Here's to the sweetest and most lovely lady in the world, bedad!" he shouted, accentuating his Irish brogue. "May the best man win her, fair fight, and no favors, and may the Queen of Heaven and all the saints watch over the little darlint and guide her choice aright!"
So all our midnight madness passed like a fleeting cloud. An extraordinary accession of high spirits came to us as we pledged the dark-haired maiden from Brazil. And it was Pat, dear old Pat, who welded us together in a league of chivalry against which nothing was ever to prevail.
"Tom," he said, "Arthur--we are all like brothers, we always have been. Let there be no change in that, now or ever. I have something to propose."
"Sure then, since we all love the same lady, that ought to bind us more together than anything else has ever done. But since we cannot all marry her, let us agree, in the first place, that no outsider ever shall."
"Hurrah!" said Arthur--I could see that he was fearfully excited--throwing his glass into the fireplace with a crash.
"I am with you, Pat!" I cried. "It's to be one of us three, and we are in league against all the other men in London. And now the question is--"