She looked bored again. “Oh, please don’t! I don’t care what you like—so long as you like Mary, who was very graceful and chic, I thought, the other night at the opera.”
It was Nigel’s turn to look bored.
“Yes. … What is this chap like, this Semolini man?”
“He’s not like anything. He’s a nice little thing.”
“Signor Semolini,” announced the servant.
A very small, very brown young man came in, clean-shaven, with large bright blue eyes, black hair, and a single eyeglass with a black ribbon.
They greeted him cordially, convinced him that he was welcome, made him feel at home, gave him tea. It was his first visit, but no one was ever shy long with Bertha. He soon began chattering very volubly in a sort of English, which, if not exactly broken, was decidedly cracked.
“I like those things of yours—at the gallery, I mean,” said Nigel patronisingly. He was always patronising to all artists, even when he didn’t know them, as in this case, to be cranks. “I think they’re top-hole; simply awfully good, I thought. I didn’t quite understand them, though, I admit.”
“But you saw ze idea?”
“What idea?”