He set down the large basket on the floor in a rather gingerly manner, placed the small one on the table, came to Harriet, kissed her audibly, and then turned to the room's second occupant with an air of surprise.
"Hello, Scotchie! What are you doing here?"
Before Dugald Maclean could answer the question he was in the throes of a second attack of dumb madness. This malady made his life a burden. When only one person was by he seldom had difficulty in expressing himself, but any addition to the company was apt to plunge him into hopeless defeat.
"Up to no good, I expect." Joseph Kelly, disapproval in his eyes, answered his own question, since other answer there was none. "I never see such a feller. Been mashing you, Harriet, by the look of him."
It was a bow drawn at a venture by a shrewd colleague of the X Division. An immediate effusion of rose pink to the young man's freckled countenance was full of information for a close observer.
"Durn me if he hasn't!" Gargantuan laughter rose to the ceiling.
Harriet blushed. But the look in her face was not discomfiture merely. There was plain annoyance and a look of rather startled anxiety for which the circumstances could hardly account.
"Scotchie, you're a nonesuch." But Joe suddenly lowered his voice in answer to the alarm in the face of his sister-in-law. "You are the limit, my lad. Do you know what he did last week, Harriet? I'll tell you."
"Let me make you a cup of tea, Joe." And his sister-in-law, who seemed oddly agitated by his arrival, rose in the humane hope of diverting the attack.
