"Nell," he said, "I suppose you wouldn't care to come to London with me?"
"Oh!" she answered smiling, a smile of a peculiar quality. It was astonishing how that simple woman could put just one tenth of one per cent of irony into a good-natured smile. "What's the meaning of this?" Then she flushed. The flush touched Edward Henry in an extraordinary manner.
("To think," he reflected incredulously, "that only last night I was talking in the dark to Elsie April—and here I am now!" And he remembered the glory of Elsie's frock, and her thrilling voice in the gloom, and that pose of hers as she leaned dimly forward.)
"Well," he said aloud, as naturally as he could, "that theatre's beginning to get up on its hind-legs now, and I should like you to see it."
A difficult pass for him, as regards his mother! This was the first time he had ever overtly spoken of the theatre in his mother's presence. In the best bedroom he had talked of it—but even there with a certain self-consciousness and false casualness. Now, his mother stared straight in front of her with an expression of which she alone among human beings had the monopoly.
"I should like to," said Nellie, generously.
"Well," said he, "I've got to go back to town to-morrow. Wilt come with me, lass?"
"Don't be silly, Edward Henry," said she. "How can I leave mother in the middle of all this spring-cleaning?"
"You needn't leave mother. We'll take her too," said Edward Henry, lightly.
"You won't!" observed Mrs. Machin.