The eagerness with which Georgie had said, “Yes. Who is it?” seemed to die out of his voice.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said. “Good morning.”
Lucia was not discouraged.
“Me coming round to have good long chat,” she said. “All my tiresome guests have gone, Georgie, and I’m staying till domani. So lovely to be here again.”
“Si,” said Georgie; just “‘si’.”
The faint suspicion became a shade more definite.
“Coming at once then,” said Lucia.
Lucia set forth and emerging on to the Green, was in time to see Daisy Quantock hurry out of Georgie’s house and bolt into her own like a plump little redfaced rabbit. Somehow that was slightly disconcerting: it required very little inductive reasoning to form the theory that Daisy had popped in to tell Georgie that Lucia had asked her to lunch, and that she had refused. Daisy must have been present also when Lucia rang Georgie up and instead of waiting to join in the good long chat had scuttled home again. A slight effort therefore was needed to keep herself up to the gay playful level and be quite unconscious that anything unpropitious could possibly have occurred. She found Georgie with his sewing in the little room which he called his study because he did his embroidery there. He seemed somehow to Lucia to be encased in a thin covering of ice, and she directed her full effulgence to the task of melting it.
“Now that is nice!” she said. “And we’ll have a good gossip. So lovely to be in Riseholme again. And isn’t it naughty of me? I was almost glad when I saw the last of my guests off this morning, and promised myself a real Riseholme day. Such dears all of them, too, and tremendously in the movement; such arguments and discussions as we had! All day yesterday I was occupied, talks with one, strolls with another, and all the time I was longing to trot round and see you and Daisy and all the rest. Any news, Georgie? What did you do with yourself yesterday?”
“Well, I was very busy too,” said Georgie. “Quite a rush. I had two guests at lunch, and then I had tea at Olga’s——”