this
morning. Found it at the boarding-house. I happened to look in there
and..."

"Ginger," interrupted Sally, "your voice is music, but I want to see
you. Where are you?"

"I'm at a chemist's shop across the street. I was wondering if..."

"Come here at once!"

"I say, may I? I was just going to ask."

"You miserable creature, why haven't you been round to see me before?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, I haven't been going about much for the last
day. You see..."

"I know. Of course." Quick sympathy came into Sally's voice. She gave
a sidelong glance of approval and gratitude at the large picture of Lew
Lucas which beamed up at her from the morning paper. "You poor thing!
How are you?"

"Oh, all right, thanks."

"Well, hurry."

There was a slight pause at the other end of the wire.

"I say."

"Well?"

"I'm not much to look at, you know."

"You never were. Stop talking and hurry over."

"I mean to say..."

Sally hung up the receiver firmly. She waited eagerly for some minutes,
and then footsteps came along the passage. They stopped at her door and
the bell rang. Sally ran to the door, flung it open, and recoiled in
consternation.

"Oh, Ginger!"

He had stated the facts accurately when he had said that he was not much
to look at. He gazed at her devotedly out of an unblemished right eye,
but the other was hidden altogether by a puffy swelling of dull purple.
A great bruise marred his left cheek-bone, and he spoke with some
difficulty through swollen lips.

"It's all right, you know," he assured her.

"It isn't. It's awful! Oh, you poor darling!" She clenched her teeth
viciously. "I wish he had killed him!"

"Eh?"

"I wish Lew Lucas or whatever his name is had murdered him. Brute!"

"Oh, I don't know, you know." Ginger's sense of fairness compelled him
to defend his late employer against these harsh sentiments. "He isn't a
bad sort of chap, really. Bugs Butler, I mean."

"Do you seriously mean to stand there and tell me you don't loathe the
creature?"

"Oh, he's all right. See his point of view and all that. Can't blame
him, if you come to think of it, for getting the wind up a bit in the
circs. Bit thick, I mean to say, a sparring-partner going at him like
that. Naturally he didn't think it much of a wheeze. It was my fault
right along. Oughtn't to have done it, of course, but somehow, when he
started making an ass of me and I knew you were looking on... well, it
seemed a good idea to