“Well, will you come across after lunch and bring them?” said Lucia. “Or tea?”
“I don’t know what they will feel inclined to do,” said Georgie. “But I’ll tell them.”
“Do, and I’ll ring up at lunch-time again, and have ickle talk to my Olga. Who is her friend?”
Georgie hesitated: he thought he would not give that away just yet. Lucia would know in heaps of time.
“Oh, just somebody whom she’s possibly bringing down,” he said, and rang off.
Lucia began to suspect a slight mystery, and she disliked mysteries, except when she made them herself. Olga’s caretaker was “sure she couldn’t say,” and Georgie (Lucia was sure) wouldn’t. So she went back to her guests, and very prudently said that Olga had not arrived at present, and then gave them a wonderful account of her little intime dinner with Olga and Princess Isabel. Such a delightful amusing woman: they must all come and meet Princess Isabel some day soon in town.
Lucia and her guests, with the exception of Sophy Alingsby who continued to play primitive tunes with one finger on the piano, went for a stroll on the Green before lunch. Mrs. Quantock hurried by with averted face, and naturally everybody wanted to know how the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland was. Lucia amused them by a bright version of poor Daisy’s ouija-board and the story of the mulberry tree.
“Such dears they all are,” she said. “But too killing. And then she planted broccoli instead of phlox. It’s only in Riseholme that such things happen. You must all come and stay with me in August, and we’ll enter into the life of the place. I adore it, simply adore it. We are always wildly excited about something.... And next door is Georgie Pillson’s house. A lamb! I’m devoted to him. He does embroidery, and gave those broken bits of glass to the Museum. And that’s dear Olga’s house at the end of the road....”
Just as Lucia was kissing her hand to Olga’s house, her eagle eye had seen a motor approaching, and it drew up at Georgie’s house. Two women got out, and there was no doubt whatever who either of them were. They went in at the gate, and he came out of his front door like the cuckoo out of a clock and made a low bow. All this Lucia saw, and though for the moment petrified, she quickly recovered, and turned sharply round.
“Well, we must be getting home again,” she said, in a rather strangled voice. “It is lunch-time.”