“I believe I did,” she said. “Then we had tea. What a pity! The chain of coincidence is broken. We are only going to have lunch. Of course you know this place well.”
“I have never been in this house before,” said Jack. “It used to belong to a queer old lady who kept forty cats, when I lived here as a boy. My only connection was that I used to catapult the cats when they came over into our garden.”
“Yes, forty is a considerable number,” said Jeannie. “Oh, here are Arthur and my aunt, Miss Fortescue. Anyhow, you haven’t met her before.”
“Excuse me, she was sitting by your hat,” said Jack.
“On it,” said Jeannie; “it was crushed flat.”
Arthur came back alone toward tea-time; Jack, he said, had gone to see his mother.
“It was kinder,” he remarked, “to let him know that a letter had been written, as he had not received it yet, and I did so. He is remarkably brave. He is as bold as a dragoon. He will talk it out, he says.”
“Mrs. Collingwood will rub it in,” said Miss Fortescue. “I am sorry for that young man. Oh, did he behave decently when he met you, Jeannie?”
Jeannie looked up, absently.
“Oh, quite decently,” she said. “It was not at all awkward. He has tact, I think; or, if he hasn’t, I have. Anyhow there was enough tact about for two.”