And I’d practically forgotten who was driving me, when his business-like voice sounded once more in my ear.
“Miss Trant! Your Christian name, as I saw by your note to my mother, is Monica?”
“Yes.”
I supposed he was now going to ask me if I had any objection to his addressing me thus as long as I was his mother’s guest. Why, of course, he’d have to! Just as I should have to bring myself to use his own name of “William.” (“Ahem! Wil-liam!” as Miss Robinson pronounced it pompously.) How queer to have to be asked to accord one’s Christian name under such terms! Really, he might have taken it as a matter of course that he must, for the next fortnight or so, call me “Monica.” Therefore I was rather taken aback by his next remark.
“I shall have to ask you if you would mind very much, while you are staying at The Lawn, being called ‘Nancy’?”
“Nancy!” I echoed, opening my eyes. “Oh, yes—no—I mean—anything you like; but why Nancy?”
Mr. Waters turned to me for a moment as the car sped smoothly down a level, empty stretch of the white highway.
“I’d better explain to you ‘why Nancy,’” he said dryly. In those keen grey eyes of his, where some time before I had suspected a gleam of humour, I now saw a quite unmistakable twinkle of fun!
There was even a twitch at the corner of those tightly-fitted lips. But he went on still more dryly. “When I informed my mother that I was engaged to be married to a lady in the office, she had a good many questions to put.”
(Well, I should think so! The Longer Catechism, in fact!) “Really?” I said meekly.