"And the news?" she said presently.
"Oh, that!" said Hugh. "It's only that I am going to get quite well and strong again. That's all."
[CHAPTER XIV]
Dodo was sitting in her room in Jack's house in Eaton Square, one morning towards the end of May, being moderately busy. She was trying to engage in a very intimate conversation with her husband, and simultaneously to conduct communication through the telephone, to smoke a cigarette, and to write letters. Considering the complicated nature of the proceeding viewed as a whole, she was getting on fairly well, but occasionally became a little mixed up in her mind, and spoke of intimate things to Jack in the determined telephone voice habitually used, or puffed cigarette smoke violently into the receiver. She had just done this and apologized to the Central exchange.
"I never knew you could send smoke down a telephone," remarked Jack.
"Double one two four Gerrard," said Dodo. "In these days of modern science you can't tell what is going to happen, and it's well to anticipate anything. No, you fool, I mean Miss, I said double one two four, eleven hundred and twenty four, if that makes it simpler. As I was saying, Jack, I don't see why I shouldn't stop in town, and have my baby here. You can put lots of straw down, like Margery Daw, and that always looks so interesting. I should like to have straw down permanently, why don't we? Darling, how are you, and as Jack's going out to lunch, and I shall be quite alone, do come round—"
Dodo's face suddenly became seraphically blank.
"Oh, are you?" she said. "Then will you tell Mrs. Arbuthnot that I hope she will come round to lunch with Lady Chesterford. Jack, I said all that to Edith's footman, who always smiles at me. I wonder if he will come to lunch instead, and say I asked him, which after all is quite true. But Edith talks so much like a man, that of course I thought it was she, whereas it was he. Yes, I don't see why I should go down to Winston for it. Babies born in London are just as healthy as babies born in Staffordshire, and people will drop in more easily afterwards. Besides I must go to Nadine's wedding if I possibly can. It would be like reading a story that you know quite well is going to end happily, and finding that the last chapter of all, which you have been saving up for, so to speak, is torn out. I shall have the most enormous lump in my throat when I see her and Hughie go up to the altar-rails together, and I love lumps in the throat. Don't you? I don't mean quinzy."