"And have a striped awning," she said.
"Yes," he said. "Make Stephen do it."
"I will," she said.
At that moment Stephen came in, with his bald head and his forty years.
"I say!" he demanded. "What are you up to?"
"We were just watching the skaters," said Vera.
"And the wonders of the night," said Charlie, chuckling characteristically. He always laughed at himself. He was a philosopher. He and Stephen had been fast friends from infancy.
"Well, you'd just better skate downstairs," said Stephen. (No romance in Stephen! He was netting a couple of thousand a year out of the manufacture of toilet-sets, in all that smoke to the north. How could you expect him to be romantic?)
"Charlie was saying how nice it would be for me to have a French window here, and a marble balcony," Vera remarked. It had not taken her long to think of marble. "You must do it for me, Steve."
"Bosh!" said Stephen. "That's just like you, Charlie. What an ass you are!"