"He wants me to come back after lunch and start things going. His sister can't get here until half past three and the tree's scheduled for three."
"Half past three!" The Mitchell dinner was to be at four, to give Belle time to get back to her case at seven. Roger could not possibly be punctual and James Mitchell hated a meal to be delayed. But Roger could not refuse Hilary.
"It's one now. There's hardly time to go home for lunch and get back here."
"I tell you. I'll go round the corner and get a bite and then clear up a few reports I didn't have time for yesterday and stay right on until she arrives. I'll leave the minute she comes."
"Try not to be later than you can help, dear, won't you?"
"I'll try. But don't wait for me. I won't be much behind. I'll come right out."
"All right. I guess you've got to stay, but—I wanted us to go together. Don't be any later than you can help," Anne again warned Roger as he took her to the elevator.
"I won't." But coming back to the office, Roger wished that Miss Wainwright would not come at all. The Mitchell dinner, from a boring incident, had become in the last forty-eight hours, through Anne's constant reference to it, an ordeal not unlike the delivery of the invitations and the tree itself. He had wanted a quiet home dinner, with liberty of silence afterwards, a small space in the cluttered confusion of the last days, in which to take careful stock of his almost irrepressible scorn of Hilary Wainwright.
But Hilda Mitchell had never had a pleasant Christmas!
Roger frowned and tried to shrug off his unjust impatience. "I wish to the Lord they'd all go and live in China or somewhere. I suppose it will be worse after the baby comes. Roger Mitchell Barton!" he whispered. "Sabatini would be better." But at the impossible combination of Roger Sabatini Barton, Roger laughed.