“It’s a wild-goose chase,” he snapped, attacking his entree savagely.  Heaven knows it was to prove so, even wilder than his dreams could paint; but if there were geese in it, myself included, there was also to be a swan.

“You don’t really mean that, Dunny,” I said firmly, continuing my dinner.  It was a good dinner; we had consulted over each item from cocktails to liqueurs, and we are both distinctly fussy about food.

“I do mean it!” insisted my guardian.  Dunny has the biggest heart in the world, with a cayenne layer over it, and this layer is always thickest when I am bound for distant parts.  “I mean every word of it, I tell you, Dev.”  Dev, like Dunny, is a misnomer; my name is Devereux—­Devereux Bayne.  “Don’t you risk your bones enough with the confounded games you play?  What’s the use of hunting shells and shrapnel like a hero in a movie reel?  We’re not in this war yet, though we soon will be, praise the Lord!  And till we are, I believe in neutrality—­upon my soul I do.”

“Here’s news, then!” I exclaimed.  “I never heard of it before.  Well, your new life begins too late, Dunny.  You brought me up the other way.  The modern system, you know, makes the parent or guardian responsible for the child.  So thank yourself for my unneutral nature and for the war medals I’m going to win!”

Muttering something about impertinence, he veered to another tack.

“If you must do it,” he croaked, “why sail for Naples instead of for Bordeaux?  The Mediterranean is full of those pirate fellows.  You read the papers—­the headlines anyway; you know it as well as I. It’s suicide, no less!  Those Huns sank the San Pietro last week.  I say, young man, are you listening?  Do you hear what I’m telling you?”

It was true that my gaze had wandered near the close of his harangue.  I like to look at my guardian; the fine old chap, with his height and straightness, his bright blue eyes and proud silver head, is a sight for sore eyes, as they say.  But just then I had glimpsed something that was even better worth seeing.  I am not impressionable, but I must confess that I was impressed by this girl.

She sat far down the room from me.  Only her back was visible and a somewhat blurred side-view reflected in the mirror on the wall.  Even so much was, however, more than welcome, including as it did a smooth white neck, a small shell-like ear, and a mass of warm, crinkly, red-brown hair.  She wore a rose-colored gown, I noticed, cut low, with a string of pearls; and her sole escort was a staid, elderly, precise being, rather of the trusted family-lawyer type.

“I haven’t missed a word, Dunny,” I assured my vis-a-vis.  “I was just wondering if Huns and pirates had quite a neutral sound.  You know I have to go via Rome to spend a week with Jack Herriott.  He has been pestering me for a good two years—­ever since he’s been secretary there.”

Grumbling unintelligible things, my guardian sampled his Chablis; and I, crumbling bread, lazily wishing I could get a front view of the girl in rose-color, filled the pause by rambling on.