How're the bruises?"

_Vivie_: "Oh, they ache rather, but it is such _joy_ to have such
friends as you and Praddy and Michael Rossiter, that I don't mind
_what_ I go through..."

_Frank_: "But I say, Viv, about this Rossiter man. He seems awfully
gone on you...?"

_Vivie_ (flushing in the firelight): "Does he? It's only friendship.
I really don't see them often but he came to my assistance once at a
critical time. And now that Praddy's all-powerful parlour-maid's
definitely left us, I will tell you _my_ story."

So she does, between five and half-past six, almost without
interruption from the spell-bound Frank--who says it licks any novel
he ever read, and she ought to turn it into a novel--with a happy
ending--or from Praed who is at times a little somnolent. Then at
half-past six, the practical Frank says:

"Look here, you chaps, I could go on listening till midnight, but
what's the matter with a bit of dinner? I dare say Praddy's
parlour-maid might turn sour if we asked her at a moment's notice to
find dinner for three. Why not come out and dine with me at the Hans
Crescent Hotel? Close by. I'll get a quiet table and we can finish
our talk there. To-morrow I must go down to Margate to see the dear
old mater, and it may be a week before I'm up again."

They adjourn to the hostelry mentioned.

Over coffee and cigarettes, Vivie makes this appeal to Frank: "Now
Frank, you know all my story. Tell me first, what really became of
the real David Williams, the young man you met in the hospital and
wrote to me about?"

_Frank_: "'Pon my life I don't know. I never heard one word about
him after I got clear of the hospital myself. You know it fell into
Boer hands during that rising in Cape Colony. I expect the 'real'
David Williams, as you call him, died from neglected wounds or
typhoid--or recovered and took to drink, or went up country and got
knocked on the head by the natives for interfering with their
women--Good riddance of bad rubbish, I expect. What do you want me
to do? I'll swear to anything in reason."

_Vivie_: "I want you to do this. Run down one day before you go back
to Africa, to South Wales, to Pontystrad--It's not far from
Swansea--And call at the Vicarage on the pretext that you've come to
enquire about David Vavasour Williams whom you once knew in South
Africa. It'll give verisimilitude to my stories. They'll probably
say they haven't seen him for ever so long, but that you can hear of
him throu