There was Tommy. Well, Joyselle would be good to him for her sake. And even if Tommy should elect to come and live with her, her mother could not prevent his doing so. She would fuss and cry and tell all her friends how ungrateful her children were, but in the end Tommy's firmness would prevail.
She laughed as she got out of the carriage at the Newlyns. By great good luck Joyselle was dining there, and Théo coming only to the dance.
"I will tell him," she thought, and her heart gave a great throb and then sank warmly into its place at the thought of seeing him. "He will turn slowly and hold his shoulders stiffly and try to look indifferent," she thought, "but oh—his eyes!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Sparrow and the Cassowary were much delighted with their own dinner and their own ball.
Freddy Newlyn was a kindly little man, with an absurd fussy manner full of importance, as so many kindly little men have. Is it by some gentle providential dispensation that the physically insignificant are so often upheld by harmless vanity?
The Cassowary, on the other hand, bony and distressingly red in the wrong places, suffered from a realisation of her own defects that she endeavoured to conceal by an assumption of the wildest high spirits. This jocularity, of course, became at times rather painful, but as she was possessed of much money and a kind heart, it was forgiven her.
The dinner was very large, and the guests sat at small tables all over the place—a delightful invention of the Cassowary's, who screamed with piercing glee at the excitement displayed as lots were drawn for the different tables.
"Seven, Sir John? Then you'll find your partner and go to the library—only three tables there! Dicky, what is your number? Four? Oh, you lucky little brute The conservatory. Who's your girl? Oh, yes, Piggy! Aren't I a lamb?"