“No, really?”

“Disturbing news from Lower Silesia, what?”

“Oh, dashed!”

He pottered about the room for a bit, babbling at intervals. The boy seemed cuckoo.

“Oh, I say, Bertie!” he said suddenly, dropping a vase which he had picked off the mantelpiece and was fiddling with. “I know what it was I wanted to tell you. I’m married.”

I stared at him. That flower in his buttonhole.⁠ ⁠… That dazed look.⁠ ⁠… Yes, he had all the symptoms; and yet the thing seemed incredible. The fact is, I suppose, I’d seen so many of young Bingo’s love affairs start off with a whoop and a rattle and poof themselves out halfway down the straight that I couldn’t believe he had actually brought it off at last.

“Married!”