He was toward the end of his omelette when a knock sounded at his door.  Thinking Judkins had returned, he called, “Come in”; but instead of Judkins the opening door admitted the belligerent young man in rumpled evening clothes of the previous night.  Now he wore a silk dressing-gown of a flamboyant peacock blue, his feet showed bare in toe slippers, his wavy, yellowish hair had the tousled effect of a very recent separation from a pillow.  A cigarette depended from the corner of his mouth.

Larry started to rise.  But the young man arrested the motion with a gesture of mock imperativeness.

“Keep your seat, fair sir; I would fain have speech with thee.”  He crossed and sat on a corner of Larry’s table, one slippered foot dangling, and looked Larry over with an appraising eye.  “Permit me to remark, sir,” he continued in his grand manner, “that you look as though you might be some one.”

“Is that what you wanted to tell me, Mr. Sherwood?” queried Larry.

The other’s grand manner vanished and he grinned.  “Forget the ’Mr. Sherwood,’ or you’ll make me feel not at home in my own house,” he begged with humorous mournfulness.  “Call me Dick.  Everybody else does.  That’s settled.  Now to the reason for this visitation at such an ungodly hour.  Sis has just been in picking on me.  Says I was rude to you last night.  I suppose I was.  I’d had several from my private stock early in the evening; and several more around in jovial Manhattan joints where prohibition hasn’t checked the flow of happiness if you know the countersign.  The cumulative effect you saw, and were the victim of.  I apologize, sir.”

“That’s all right, Mr.—­”

“Dick is what I said,” interrupted the other.

“Dick, then.  It’s all right.  I understand.”

“Thanks.  I’ll call you Old Captain Nemo for short.  Sis didn’t tell me your name or anything about you, and she said I wasn’t to ask you questions.  But whatever Isabel does is usually one hundred percent right.  She said I’d probably be seeing a lot of you, so I’ll introduce myself.  You’d learn all about me from some one else, anyhow, so you might as well learn about me from me and get an impartial and unbiased statement.  Clever of me, ain’t it, to beat ’em to it?”

Larry found himself smiling back into the ingratiating, irresponsible, boyish face.  “I suppose so.”

“I’ll shoot you the whole works at once.  Name, Richard Livingston Sherwood.  Years, twenty-four, but alleged not yet to have reached the age of discretion.  One of our young flying heroes who helped save France and make the world safe for something or other by flapping his wings over the endless alkali of Texas.  Occupation, gentleman farmer.”

“You a farmer!” exclaimed Larry.

“A gentleman farmer,” corrected Dick.  “The difference between a farmer and a gentleman farmer, Captain Nemo, is that a gentleman farmer makes no profit on his crops.  Now my friends say I’m losing an awful lot of money and am sowing an awfully big crop.  And according to them, instead of practicing sensible crop rotation, I’m a foolish one-crop farmer—­and my one crop is wild oats.”