‘Good-evening, Mr Brindley,’ she expanded.  ’You’re quite a stranger.’  And she embraced me also in the largeness of her welcome.

‘It just happens,’ said Mr Brindley, ’that I was here last night.  But you weren’t.’

‘Were you now!’ she exclaimed, as though learning a novel fact of the most passionate interest.  The truth is, I had to leave the bar to Miss Slaney last night.  Mrs Moorcroft was ill—­and the baby only six weeks old, you know—­and I wouldn’t leave her.  No, I wouldn’t.’

It was plain that in Miss Annie Brett’s opinion there was only one really capable intelligence in the Tiger.  This glimpse of her capability, this out-leaping of the latent maternal in her, completely destroyed for the moment my vision of her afloat on the bosom of the lake.

‘I see,’ said Mr Brindley kindly.  Then he turned to me with characteristic abruptness.  ‘Well, give it a name, Mr Loring.’

Such is my simplicity that I did not immediately comprehend his meaning.  For a fraction of a second I thought of the baby.  Then I perceived that he was merely employing one of the sacred phrases, sanctified by centuries of usage, of the private bar.  I had already drunk mercurey, green Chartreuse, and coffee.  I had a violent desire not to drink anything more.  I knew my deplorable tomorrows.  Still, I would have drunk hot milk, cold water, soda water, or tea.  Why should I not have had what I did not object to having?  Herein lies another mystery of the private bar.  One could surely order tea or milk or soda water from a woman who left everything to tend a mother with a six-weeks-old baby!  But no.  One could not.  As Miss Annie Brett smiled at me pointedly, and rubbed her ringed hands, and kept on smiling with her terrific mechanical effusiveness, I lost all my self control; I would have resigned myself to a hundred horrible tomorrows under the omnipotent, inexplicable influence of the private bar.  I ejaculated, as though to the manner born—­

‘Irish.’

It proved to have been rather clever of me, showing as it did a due regard for convention combined with a pretty idiosyncrasy.  Mr Brindley was clearly taken aback.  The idea struck him as a new one.  He reflected, and then enthusiastically exclaimed—­

‘Dashed if I don’t have Irish too!’

And Miss Brett, delighted by this unexpected note of Irish in the long, long symphony of Scotch, charged our glasses with gusto.  I sipped, death in my heart, and rakishness in my face and gesture.  Mr Brindley raised his glass respectfully to Miss Annie Brett, and I did the same.  Those two were evidently good friends.