"Oh, no, darling!—Attilio may be impulsive—but he isn't stupid."
Sophy's grey eyes grew long with laughter. Olive, puzzled, demanded to know what she could be laughing at.
"I think Attilio is such a funny name, Olive. Do you really call him Attilio?"
"Of course I do. But I don't think it is a funny name exactly—only sweetly quaint. Besides—there's positively no shortening it. Tilio is too silly, and one couldn't call a man 'Tilly' ... an Italian of all things. Now could one?"
Sophy laughed and laughed, and Olive, after pouting for a second, joined in.
As Sophy thought, Chesney was much pleased with the idea of this dinner at the House of Commons.
"It will be mostly made up of the Conservative gang, I suppose," he commented. "All the more fun baiting them. I know a thing or two that will wring the withers of the Hon. John—stodgy duffer! Thank God, his career will end in the cul-de-sac of the House of Lords!"
He began walking up and down the room, grinning over the "thing or two" with which he would "wring the withers" of his host. Sophy felt suddenly anxious. Suppose he had one of his outbursts of rage at that dinner? She had forgotten his violent antipathy to the Powers that Were, when she accepted the invitation.
"I suppose there'll be Liberals, too, at the dinner," she ventured rather timidly.