“My Jim? I think he’s yours. He told me to give you his love, if I thought you wouldn’t mind. I didn’t think you would.”
“My dear, how kind of him! Why didn’t you bring him down with you?”
“Because I wanted you all to myself, of course.”
She put her arm through his.
“Oh, Robin,” she said, “I should have been so disappointed if you had brought him. But I didn’t want to tell you not to. I thought perhaps you would, and I should have hated you for not wanting me all to yourself. And how is Miss Diphtheria Coombe? Is that her name?”
“Yes. She sent her love to you, too, and asked when you would talk over settlements with Mommer.”
“What a liar you are, darling,” said she. “I don’t know where you get it from. Whom else have you been seeing?”
“I saw Lady Gurtner—oh, I think she’s Gardner now—yesterday: I dined with her. She asked me to dinner nine times, so at last I went. One does go in the end.”
“Dinner-party?” asked his mother.
“Yes: about twenty. Not a single one of them had I ever seen before except that horrid friend of yours, what’s his name?”