“Yes—to attend a charity performance for the benefit of the Female Waifs' Refuge. She is to dance.”
“Who? Mrs. Brown?”
Edith paid no attention to this impertinence. “They are to make an artificial evening at eleven o'clock in the morning.”
“They must have got hold of Mavick's notion that this dance is religious in its origin. Do you, know if the exercises will open with prayer?”
“Nonsense, Jack. You know I don't intend to go. I shall send a small check.”
“Well, draw it mild. But isn't this what I'm accused of doing—shirking my duty of personal service by a contribution?”
“Perhaps. But you didn't have any of that shirking feeling last night, did you?”
Jack laughed, and ran round to give the only reply possible to such a gibe. These breakfast interludes had not lost piquancy in all these months. “I'm half a mind to go to this thing. I would, if it didn't break up my day so.”
“As for instance?”
“Well, this morning I have to go up to the riding-school to see a horse—Storm; I want to try him. And then I have to go down to Twist's and see a lot of Japanese drawings he's got over. Do you know that the birds and other animals those beggars have been drawing, which we thought were caricatures, are the real thing? They have eyes sharp enough to see things in motion—flying birds and moving horses which we never caught till we put the camera on them. Awfully curious. Then I shall step into the club a minute, and—”