"You had better come and speak to my grandmother this afternoon."
He nodded pensively.
"She might raise some difficulties," Mary went on, trying to realize that there was another existence outside the serene and silver world in which the beating of her own heart sounded so loud. "Come about four," she said, rising. "I will explain how all this has happened."
He kissed once more her hand and stood watching her as she floated across the level grass toward home.
It was only when Mary heard the door of the house in King's Gate close behind her and the gong chime for lunch that she began to wonder if it was all going to be as easy as it had seemed by the banks of the pale blue Serpentine. However, Pierre was coming this afternoon, and Grandmamma must be warned. Lunch was surely unusually disturbed to-day. The maids were always in and out with new dishes. Perhaps it would be best to wait until they went up to the drawing-room for coffee. Would that mean Grandmamma's missing her nap? If it did, it could not be helped. At least she must be told that there was such a person.
"Did I ever tell you about a boy called Pierre Menard?" Mary asked when she had poured out the coffee. It took a long time to describe that scene ten years ago when Pierre followed the drum to glory, so long that Grandmamma was nodding before Mary had finished. But when Mary added that curiously enough she had met him again the other day, met him once or twice in fact, and that he had asked her if he could call this afternoon, Grandmamma sat upright and looked more wide-awake than Mary had ever seen her yet.
"Is the young man going to call on you or me?"
"On you, Grandmamma."
"Oh," the old lady grimly commented. "Then I'd better go and take my rest at once."
Mary could not make up her mind whether she should stay in the drawing-room until Pierre came or whether it would be wiser to let him interview her grandmother first. In the end she decided upon the latter course, and in great agitation of spirit she went upstairs to her own room where she tried to distract her thoughts by trying on several new dresses with which Lady Flower had insisted on replenishing her wardrobe, so that she should not carry an end-of-the-season air about her, the old lady had said. But the new dresses were incapable of keeping her from running out on the landing every few minutes to hear if the front door was being opened. It became impossible to remain in her room, and she went back to the drawing-room so that she might see Pierre first and warn him that her grandmother was likely to be difficult.