Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/137

Rh propelled him like a child to the designated table. There was no resisting that mighty force.

"Now," continued Corbell, turning to Sir Edgar. "What are we going to do about this thing? I am glad to see you boys had sense enough to crowd around and hide him. I should have been mortified to have the Colonel see him in this state. It was a narrow squeak. While he is not a member, still we are responsible for him. Disgracefully pickled!"

"Oh, I say!" protested Sir Edgar feebly.

But Kenneth could stay no longer to see the outcome. He had been for some time shifting from one foot to the other in an agony of indecision. Kenneth had a horrible fear that the number of dances he was "bolting" could never be explained. He returned to the ballroom. When, an hour later, he looked into the bar it was empty—save for Sir Edgar. That peer's swallow coat tails had been nailed to the wall. Sir Edgar was struggling feebly to get away.

"Chuck it, old chap, chuck it!" Kenneth understood him to say.

hard these joyous spirits might play, they worked equally hard. Only—as is always the case with such men—the work was done far away and out of sight where it did no good to their reputations. On Monday morning they had disappeared, and Kenneth learned from Barney that they would probably not reappear until the following month. They left behind them the clue to one gorgeous story that kept the town chuckling foil a week, once its fragments had been pieced together. The clue was an inquiry by Sir Edgar, proffered so many times that at length its repetition aroused the curiosity of the old boys around the Fremont veranda.

"Do you know Frank Moore?" he would ask, screwing in his monocle. "Rum sort of chap, now, isn't he?"

"Why does he pick out Frank Moore especially from that gang of young hoodlums?" speculated Saxon.

"I'll ask Jim Paige," said Boyd.

It seemed that there was about half way up one of the cañons