“Miss Trant! D’you mind me asking you if you’re going out with Mr. Waters because you like it, or because you can’t say ‘No’?”
“Who would say ‘No’”—I fenced flippantly—“to a Savoy lunch?”
“Some girls might,” murmured Miss Smith. Miss Robinson, answering not my words, but my tone, said, “Of course it’s none of my business—except that while you’re here you are supposed to be one of us. And I can’t say——”
“Can’t say what?” I demanded, meeting her shrewd eyes squarely with my defiant ones. She flushed a little, and I was glad. But she stuck to her guns.
“I can’t say that it looks any too well! A man in his position, and a girl in yours! Under those circumstances——”
“You know nothing,” I said, deliberately and coldly, “about the circumstances.”
Still more deliberately I tossed a glance into the inevitably soap-splashed mirror at the set of my hat. Then, without another word, I turned out of the open door and walked to the lift, humming a tune just loud enough for them all to hear.
This time I didn’t trouble to glance up from the entrance, where my employer joined me, to the landing window. The girls would not be watching me off this time.
“Savoy!”
The taxi-driver touched his peaked cap with a quite unusual suggestion of deference. I suppose he had found Savoy luncheon-escorts were generous tippers. I wondered if he had ever before driven a couple in quite these “circumstances.”