“Pearls? Pearls? Pearls?” I said. “No, really? Dashed annoying. Where did you see them last?”

“What does it matter where I saw them last? They have been stolen.”

Here Wilfred the Whisker King, who seemed to have been taking a rest between rounds, stepped into the ring again and began to talk rapidly in French. Cut to the quick he seemed. The chambermaid whooped in the corner.

“Sure you’ve looked everywhere?” I said.

“Of course I’ve looked everywhere.”

“Well, you know, I’ve often lost a collar stud and⁠—”

“Do try not to be so maddening, Bertie! I have enough to bear without your imbecilities. Oh, be quiet! Be quiet!” she shouted in the sort of voice used by sergeant-majors and those who call the cattle home across the Sands of Dee. And such was the magnetism of her forceful personality that Wilfred subsided as if he had run into a wall. The chambermaid continued to go strong.