Marguerite was brought back from Cheltenham to grace the new establishment and assist in its management. She shared none of her mother's illusions as to the character of Mr. Cresta Morris, as that gentleman explained to a very select audience one January night.
Mr. Morris and his two guests sat before a roaring fire in the dining-room, drinking hot brandies-and-waters. Mrs. Morris had gone to bed; Marguerite was washing up, for Mrs. Morris had the "servant's mind," which means that she could never keep a servant.
The sound of crashing plates had come to the dining-room and interrupted Mr. Morris at a most important point of his narrative. He jerked his head round.
"That's the girl," he said; "she's going to be a handful."
"Get her married," said Job Martin wisely.
He was a hatchet-faced man with a reputation for common-sense. He had another reputation which need not be particularized at the moment.
"Married?" scoffed Mr. Morris. "Not likely!"
He puffed at his cigar thoughtfully for a moment, then:
"She wouldn't come in to dinner--did you notice that? We are not good enough for her. She's fly! Fly ain't the word for it. We always find her nosing and sneaking around."
"Send her back to school," said the third guest.
He was a man of fifty-five, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, who had literally played many parts, for he had been acting in a touring company when Morris first met him--Mr. Timothy Webber, a man not unknown to the Criminal Investigation Department.
"She might have been useful," Mr. Morris went on regretfully, "very useful indeed. She is as pretty as a picture, I'll give her that due. Now, suppose she----"
"It's my way or no way," he said decidedly. "I've been a month studying this fellow, and I tell you I know him inside out."
"Have you been to see him?" asked the second man.
"Am I a fool?" replied the other roughly. "Of course I have not been to see him. But there are ways of finding out, aren't there? He is not the kind of lad that you can work with a woman, not if she's as pretty as paint."
"Bones," said Webber, with a little grin. "At least, he has letters which start 'Dear Bones,' so I suppose that's his nickname. But he's got all the money in the world. He is full of silly ass schemes, and he's romantic."