I looked at him keenly. If you ask my Aunt Agatha, she will tell you⁠—in fact, she is quite likely to tell you even if you don’t ask her⁠—that I am a vapid and irreflective chump. Barely sentient, was the way she once described me: and I’m not saying that in a broad, general sense she isn’t right. But there is one department of life in which I am old Lynx-Eye in person. I can recognize Love’s Young Dream more quickly than any other bloke of my weight and age in the Metropolis. So many of my pals have copped it in the past few years that now I can spot it a mile off on a foggy day. Sippy was leaning back in his chair, chewing a piece of india rubber, with a far-off look in his eyes, and I formed my diagnosis instantly.

“Tell me all, laddie,” I said.

“Bertie, I love her.”

“Stout fellow! Have you told her so?”

“How can I?”