'Well, why should he have asked them on purpose? How you argue! How you go on! It really seems to me you're getting absurdly exacting and touchy, Edith dear. I believe all those flowers from the embassy have positively turned your head. Why should he have asked them on purpose. You admit yourself that we didn't even know the man last Thursday, and yet you expect—' Bruce stopped. He had got into a slight tangle.
Edith looked away. She had not quite mastered the art of the inward smile.
'Far better, in my opinion,' continued Bruce, walking up and down the room.—'Now, don't interrupt me in your impulsive way, but hear me out—it would be far more kind and sensible in every way for you to sit right down at that little writing-table, take out your stylographic pen and write and tell my mother that I have a bad attack of influenza…. Yes; one should always be considerate to one's parents. I suppose it really is the way I was brought up that makes me feel this so keenly,' he explained.
Edith sat down to the writing-table. 'How bad is your influenza?'
'Oh, not very bad; because it would worry her: a slight attack.—Stop! Not so very slight—we must let her think it's the ordinary kind, and then she'll think it's catching and she won't come here for a few days, and that will avoid our going into the matter in detail, which would be better.'
'If she thinks it's catching, dear, she'll want Archie and Dilly, and Miss Townsend and Nurse to go and stay with her in South Kensington, and that will be quite an affair.'
'Right as usual; very thoughtful of you; you're a clever little woman sometimes, Edith. Wait!'—he put up his hand with a gesture frequent with him, like a policeman stopping the traffic at Hyde Park Corner. 'Wait!—leave out the influenza altogether, and just say I've caught a slight chill.'
'Yes. Then she'll come over at once, and you'll have to go to bed.'
'My dear Edith,' said Bruce, 'you're over-anxious; I shall do nothing of the kind. There's no need that I should be laid up for this. It's not serious.'
He was beginning to believe in his own illness, as usual.