His discourse thus characteristically concluded, my friend sat silent and pensive.
"You appear to have studied the question deeply and scientifically," I said, frankly impressed.
"My lad," replied Dicky with feeling, "if you possessed a disposition as flighty as mine--"
"All right--as quixotic as mine, and were also blessed with a dear old mother who spent her life confronting you with attractive young women with a view to matrimony, you would begin to study the question deeply and scientifically too. I am only a Freak, and all that, but I don’t want to make a mess of a girl’s life if I can help it; and that, old friend, owing to my susceptible nature and gentle maternal pressure from the rear, is exactly what I am in great danger of doing. I have had to mark time pretty resolutely of late, I can tell you. And that brings us to the matter in hand. Hilda and I seem to have reached the end of our tether. Something has got to be done."
"It is just possible," I said, "that Miss Beverley has done it already."
"It--the only thing that ought to be done."
"When the others went upstairs to bed Miss Hilda retired into an inner drawing-room and sat down at a writing-table. There is no post out of here until lunch-time to-morrow. Therefore she was probably writing to some one in the house."
"To me," he announced at length. "Economical hobby. No stamps required. Well?"
"Supposing," I continued, "that Miss Beverley has been writing to you to-night--what then?"
"I shall receive a letter from her in the morning," concluded Dicky. "Eh? Wrong answer? Sorry! What will happen, then?"
"On my pin-cushion, when I go upstairs to bed," he said at last--"although it strikes me as a most unmaidenly action for Hilda."
"So unmaidenly," I replied, "that you will probably find the letter on the hall table by your candle. Come and see."
My faith in Miss Beverley’s sense of propriety was fully justified, for we found the letter in the hall beside the candlesticks exactly as I had foretold. Probably it had not lain there more than five minutes.
"By Heavens, Holmes," exclaimed Dicky, who after his late lofty flight had characteristically relapsed into one of his most imbecile moods, "this is wonderful!"
We bore the letter back to the billiard-room.
