“My dear old son, he didn’t mind being called a fat little buffer.  You keep harping on that.  It’s no discredit to a man to be a fat little buffer.  Some of the noblest men I have met have been fat little buffers.  What was the matter with old Derrick was a touch of liver.  I said to myself, when I saw him eating cheese, ’that fellow’s going to have a nasty shooting pain sooner or later.’  I say, laddie, just heave another rock or two at those cocks, will you.  They’ll slay each other.”

I had hoped, fearing the while that there was not much chance of such a thing happening, that the professor might get over his feeling of injury during the night and be as friendly as ever next day.  But he was evidently a man who had no objection whatever to letting the sun go down upon his wrath, for when I met him on the following morning on the beach, he cut me in the most uncompromising manner.

Phyllis was with him at the time, and also another girl, who was, I supposed, from the strong likeness between them, her sister.  She had the same mass of soft brown hair.  But to me she appeared almost commonplace in comparison.

It is never pleasant to be cut dead, even when you have done something to deserve it.  It is like treading on nothing where one imagined a stair to be.  In the present instance the pang was mitigated to a certain extent—­not largely—­by the fact that Phyllis looked at me.  She did not move her head, and I could not have declared positively that she moved her eyes; but nevertheless she certainly looked at me.  It was something.  She seemed to say that duty compelled her to follow her father’s lead, and that the act must not be taken as evidence of any personal animus.

That, at least, was how I read off the message.

Two days later I met Mr. Chase in the village.

“Hullo, so you’re back,” I said.

“You’ve discovered my secret,” he admitted; “will you have a cigar or a cocoanut?”

There was a pause.

“Trouble I hear, while I was away,” he said.

I nodded.

“The man I live with, Ukridge, did what you warned me against.  Touched on the Irish question.”

“Home Rule?”

“He mentioned it among other things.”

“And the professor went off?”

“Like a bomb.”

“He would.  So now you have parted brass rags.  It’s a pity.”

I agreed.  I am glad to say that I suppressed the desire to ask him to use his influence, if any, with Mr. Derrick to effect a reconciliation.  I felt that I must play the game.  To request one’s rival to give one assistance in the struggle, to the end that he may be the more readily cut out, can hardly be considered cricket.

“I ought not to be speaking to you, you know,” said Mr. Chase.  “You’re under arrest.”

“He’s still——?” I stopped for a word.

“Very much so.  I’ll do what I can.”

“It’s very good of you.”