It was the voice of Adrian, raised in song. And repeating the same
complaisant proffer, to a tune which I suspect was improvised, it drew
near along the outer passage, till, in due process, the door of the
billiard-room was opened, and Adrian stood upon the threshold.

"Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine e-e-ear," he trolled
robustly--and then, espying Anthony, fell silent.

Anthony appeared to be deep engrossed in letter-writing.

"Ahem," said Adrian, having waited a little.

But Anthony did not look up.

"Well, of all unlikely places," said Adrian, wondering.

Anthony's pen flew busily backwards and forwards across his paper.

"Remarkable power of mental concentration," said Adrian, on a key of
philosophic comment.

"Eh? What?" Anthony at last questioned, but absently, from the depths,
without raising his eyes.

"I 've been hunting far and wide for you--ransacking the house, turning
the park topsy-turvy," said Adrian.

"Eh? What?" questioned Anthony, writing on.

But Adrian lost patience.

"Eh? What? I 'll eh-what you," he threatened, shaking his fist. "Come.
Put aside that tiresome letter. 'Do you happen to know where your master
is?' says I to Wickersmith. 'Well, if you 'll pardon my saying so, sir,
I think I see him agoing in the direction of the billiard-room, saving
your presence, sir,' says Wickersmith to me." Adrian pantomimed the
supposed deference of the butler. Then, loftily, "But, 'Shoo' says I.
'An optical delusion, my excellent Wick. A Christian man would be
incapable of such a villainy. The billiard-room, that darksome cavern,
on a heaven-sent day like this? Shucks,' says I. Yet"--his attitude
became exhortative--"see how mighty is truth, see how she prevails, see
how the scoffer is confounded. To the billiard-room I transport myself,
sceptically, on the off-chance, and--here, good-lack, you are."

"It's the weather," Anthony explained, having finally relinquished his
correspondence. "I was in the garden--but I could n't stand the weather."

"The weather?" wondered Adrian. "You could n't stand the weather? My
poor lamb. Ah, what a delicate constitution. He could n't stand the
weather." Eyes uplifted, he wagged a compassionate head.

But suddenly, from the sarcastic note, he passed to the censorious, and
then to a kind of gay rhapsodic.

"The weather? Shame upon your insinuations. I will not hear one
syllable against it. The weather? There never _was_ such