"Everybody out?" asked he.
"Yes," answered I. "Everybody."
He did not ask whether his nephew had been there. He drew a chair up to the table and began playing with the reels and tapes in my work-basket. Mother and Joyce would have been in an agony at seeing their sacred precincts invaded by the cruel hand of man, but it rather amused me to see the hopeless mess into which he was getting the hooks and silks and needles. My basket never was a miracle of orderliness at any time.
"Is Miss Joyce quite well?" said he at last, trying to get the scissors free of a train of cotton in which he had entangled them.
I felt almost inclined to laugh. Even to me, who am awkward enough, this seemed such an awkward way of introducing the subject, for of course I had guessed that he had missed her directly he had come into the room.
"Yes, quite well, thank you," answered I. And then I added, laughing, and seeing that he had got hold of a bit of my lace, "Oh, take care, please, that's a bit of my finery for to-morrow night."
He dropped it as if it had burned him. "Oh dear, dear, yes, how clumsy I am!" cried he, pushing the work-basket far from him. "I hope I have spoiled nothing."
"Why, no, of course not," laughed I. "I oughtn't to have spoken. But you see I have only got that one bit of lace, and I want it for to-morrow night."
"Oh yes; I suppose you young ladies are going to be very grand indeed," smiled he.