“Are you going anywhere this evening?” Michael managed to ask at last.
“I suppose we shall go on the pier. We usually go on the pier. Eh, but it’s rather dull in Bournemouth. I like Llandudno better. Llandudno’s fine,” said the elder Miss McDonnell with fervour.
Mrs. Fane came to the rescue of an awkward conversation by asking the Miss McDonnells if they would take pity on her son and invite him to accompany them. And so it was arranged.
“Happy, Michael?” asked his mother when the ladies, with many smiles, had withdrawn to their rooms.
“Yes. I’m all right,” said Michael. “Only I rather wish you hadn’t asked them so obviously. It made me feel rather a fool.”
“Dearest boy, they were delighted at the idea of your company. They seem quite nice people too. Only, as I said, very provincial. Older, too, than I thought at first.”
Michael asked how old his mother thought they were, and she supposed them to be about twenty-seven and thirty. Michael was inclined to protest against this high estimate, but since he had spoken to the Miss McDonnells, he felt that after all his mother might be right.
In the evening his new friends came down to dinner much enwrapped in feathers, and Michael thought that Kathleen looked very beautiful in the crimson lamplight of the dinner-table.
“How smart you are, Michael, to-night!” said Mrs. Fane.
“Oh, well, I thought as I’d got my dinner-jacket down here I might as well put it on. I say, mother, I think I’ll get a tail-coat. Couldn’t I have one made here?”