Lucia became suddenly alert again. She was sorry for Pepino’s cold, but it gave her an admirable gambit for what she had made up her mind to do.
“My dear, that’s enough,” she said. “I won’t have you flying about London with a bad cold coming on. I shall take you down to Riseholme to-morrow.”
“Oh, but you can’t, my dear,” said he. “You’ve got your engagement-book full for the next three days.”
“Oh, a lot of stupid things,” said she. “And really, I tell you, quite honestly, I’m fairly worn out. It’ll do us both good to have a rest for a day or two. Now don’t make objections. Let us see what I’ve got to do.”
The days were pretty full (though, alas, Thursday evening was deplorably empty) and Lucia had a brisk half-hour at the telephone. To those who had been bidden here, and to those to whom she had been bidden, she gave the same excuse, namely, that she had been advised (by herself) two or three days’ complete rest.
She rang up The Hurst, to say that they were coming down to-morrow, and would bring the necessary attendants, she rang up Georgie (for she was not going to fall into that error again) and in a mixture of baby language and Italian, which he found very hard to understand, asked him to dine to-morrow night, and finally she scribbled a short paragraph to the leading morning papers to say that Mrs. Philip Lucas had been ordered to leave London for two or three days’ complete rest. She had hesitated a moment over the wording of that, for it was Pepino who was much more in need of rest than she, but it would have been rather ludicrous to say that Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas were in need of a complete rest.... These announcements she sent by hand so that there might be no miscarriage in their appearance to-morrow morning. And then, as an afterthought, she rang up Daisy Quantock and asked her and Robert to lunch to-morrow.
She felt much happier. She would not be at the fell Marcia’s ball, because she was resting in the country.
CHAPTER VIII
A FEW minutes before Lucia and Pepino drove off next morning from Brompton Square, Marcia observed Lucia’s announcement in the Morning Post. She was a good-natured woman, but she had been goaded, and now that Lucia could goad her no more for the present, she saw no objection to asking her to her ball. She thought of telephoning, but there was the chance that Lucia had not yet started, so she sent her a card instead, directing it to 25 Brompton Square, saying that she was At Home, dancing, to have the honour to meet a string of exalted personages. If she had telephoned, no one knows what would have happened, whether Daisy would have had any lunch that day or Georgie any dinner that night, and what excuse Lucia would have made to them.... Adele and Tony Limpsfield, the most adept of all the Luciaphils, subsequently argued the matter out with much heat, but never arrived at a solution that they felt was satisfactory. But then Marcia did not telephone....
The news that the two were coming down was, of course, all over Riseholme a few minutes after Lucia had rung Georgie up. He was in his study when the telephone bell rang, in the fawn-coloured Oxford trousers, which had been cut down from their monstrous proportions and fitted quite nicely, though there had been a sad waste of stuff. Robert Quantock, the wag who had danced a hornpipe when Georgie had appeared in the original voluminousness, was waggish again, when he saw the abbreviated garments, and à propos of nothing in particular had said “Home is the sailor, home from sea,” and that was the epitaph on the Oxford trousers.