Mr. Doyle, a slightly-built, clean-shaven young man with black hair, turned in the act of bowing to Cynthia. “I’m not!” he said indignantly.
“Yes, you are,” his future sister-in-law contradicted him. “How could you help being, with a name like Pat Doyle?”
“But my name isn’t Pat Doyle. It’s Henry Doyle. Pat’s a nickname, goodness knows why. I’ve told you a hundred——”
“Stop arguing and shake hands with the lady,” the younger Miss Howard interrupted. “Goodness knows your manners are bad enough at the best of times without making them worse. And we did want you to shine a little to-night. That’s why I told you not to speak with your mouth full, like you usually do, and not to wave your fork in the air when you argue. Of course you’re Irish!”
With a somewhat heightened colour, which told Cynthia that these candid remarks were not without their substratum of truth, Mr. Doyle completed his greeting of his hostess. George, trying hard to look as if he had heard nothing, took Cynthia’s slim hand in his huge paw and told her, with remarkable earnestness, that it had been a topping day; he also expressed his hopes that it would be as topping a day to-morrow. One gathered that George was being what he considered tactful.
Cynthia embarked upon her share of the unnatural conversation that takes place between intimate friends before a rather formal dinner.
Glancing surreptitiously at Dora from time to time, Cynthia decided that the engagement had done her friend good. Dora seemed quieter. Not subdued, or anything like that, but tasting her enjoyment of life with a rather more detached, almost a lazy air. In contrast with the more bounding spirits of Laura, Dora seemed far older than the two years between them would have suggested. Cynthia was conscious of a certain relief.
Five minutes later Guy came hurrying in and paused for a moment in the doorway, blinking benignly round through his glasses. “Sorry I’m so late,” he apologised. “Hallo, Dawks. Good-evening, Laura. The bottles were disgustingly dirty, and I had to go and wash again.”
“Never mind washing, in a good cause,” murmured Mr. Doyle, and came forward to be introduced.
The cocktails which Guy then proceeded to dispense played their usual helpful part (what would civilisation be without its cocktails?) and the little gathering moved into the dining-room. Dora seemed, for such a self-possessed young woman, acutely conscious of the presence of her fiancé, on trial, as it were, before the Best Friend, and was in consequence refreshingly innocuous; Laura, who was only meeting Guy for the third time and was not yet quite sure what to make of him, was equally tentative. Cynthia was able to take her seat at the bottom of the table with the happy confidence that her party was going to be a success. Cynthia was more right than she imagined.