Willie Prime was a little puzzled to know how he ought to treat
Charlie. 'Charlie' he had been in very old days--then Master Charlie
(that was Willie's mother's doing)--then Mr. Charles. But now Willie
had set up for himself. He had played billiards with a lord, and
football against the Sybarites, and, incidentally, hobnobbed with quite
great people. It is not very easy to assert a social position when one
has nothing on, and only one's head out of water, but Willie did it.

"Good-morning--er--Merceron," said he.

Victor heard him, and put up his eyeglass in amazement; but he, in his
turn, had only a shirt on, and the hauteur was a failure. Charlie
utterly failed to notice the incident.

"Is it cold?" he shouted.

"Beastly," answered Willie. The man who has got in always tells the man
who is going to get in that it is "beastly cold."

"Here goes!" cried Charlie; and a minute later he was treading water by
Willie's side.

"Miss Wallace all fit?" he asked.

"Thank you, yes, she's all right."

"And her friend?"

"All right, I believe."

"And when is it to be, old fellow?"

"Soon as I get a rise."

"What?" asked the unsophisticated Charlie, who knew the phrase chiefly
in connection with fish.

"A rise of screw, you know."

"Oh, ah, yes--what a fool I am!" and Charlie disappeared beneath the
waves.

When they were all on the bank, drying, Willie, encouraged by not being
discouraged (save by Sutton's silence) in his advances, ventured
further, and asked in a joking tone:

"And aren't you marked off yet? We've been expecting to hear of it for
the last twelve months."

"What do you mean'?"

"Why, you and Miss Bushell."

Charlie struggled through his shirt, and then answered, with his first
touch of distance:

"Nothing in it. People've got no business to gossip."

"It's damned impertinent," observed Victor Sutton in slow and
deliberate tones.

Willie flushed.

"I beg pardon," he said gruffly. "I only repeated what I heard."

"My dear fellow, no harm's done," cried Charlie. "Who was the fool?"

"Well--in fact--my father."

The situation was awkward, but they wisely eluded it by laughter. But a
thought struck Charlie.

"I say, did your father state it as a fact?"

"Oh no; but as a certainty, you know."

"When?"

"Last night at supper."

Charlie's brow clouded. Miss B--that is, Agatha, was certain to have
been at supper. However, all that could be put right in the
evening--that one bles