"Jemmie," she whispered, feeling exactly as if she had swallowed a pill without water.
"You have made me radiantly happy," he affirmed. "By Jove, I feel as if I never knew my name was Jemmie until this moment."
As for Mary, she felt nothing except a vague hope that she had not committed herself too deeply by granting Mr. Alison's desire to be called Jemmie. Her grandmother might choose to consider that by doing so she had accepted him. She prayed that Daisy Harland would soon reach London. Otherwise, at this rate, she would find herself married before she knew it.
For the rest of the evening she managed to avoid her suitor, though it was at the cost of having to endure the dissertative bibble-babble upon Japanese interiors of a young man with long hair and a double chin, one of those artistic people whom the hostess had invited to her reception in order to support a daring social experiment that was having a vogue.
"Did Mr. Alison give you an amusing account of his tour in France?" Lady Flower inquired after the sound of the last carriage had died away on the frosty air.
"He talked about France. He wasn't very amusing," said Mary.
"You seemed to be getting on very well together, nevertheless," observed her grandmother. "In fact, when What's-his-name, the tenor, was singing it was really quite noticeable that you were too much occupied with each other to pay any attention to the music."
"We were discussing the music," Mary said, wishing that her grandmother would go to bed, and not ask any more questions.
"I suppose that if he does seriously intend to ask for your hand he will speak to me first. He's not so young as to be able to neglect that courtesy. He's not one of the young communards of to-day who consider they have equal rights with parents and guardians. He'll be ready to admit that we elders have some authority left. Only fancy, my dear, Lady Pringle tells me that her daughters demand, yes, positively demand, to play in a lawn-tennis competition next summer. A public affair, as far as I can make out. She made me shudder with her description of it. Young women of breeding and education are to expose themselves in front of anybody who likes to pay the necessary charge for admission. Dear me, I remember that your poor grandfather used sometimes to be shocked by what he considered my ultra-modern and extravagantly continental ideas. What would he have said, had he been alive to-day? I do hope your friend, Daisy Harland, won't persuade you into wanting to appear as a female acrobat. She has always struck me as the kind of young woman who would do anything. She was a dreadfully noisy girl, I remember."
Mary allowed Daisy's character to be sacrificed in order to divert her grandmother from the discussion of Mr. Alison. Soon she was able to propose bed and was glad when at last she found herself alone in the dark with her secret.