“Oh, Hugh, I want you to sing so!” she said. “I shall be so proud of you!”
They were still at Cookham when this occurred, on the eve of Peggy’s departure to Marienbad with her husband, and on the moment she came out on to the lawn where they were sitting.
“Oh, what a bad reason,” said Hugh; “as if you couldn’t be proud of a person all alone! Love in a cottage among the earwigs is better than the gilded throng. I’ll sing to you as often as you like at Mannington. What have other people got to do with you and me? Let’s ask Peggy.”
Edith laughed.
“Yes, do,” she said, knowing how a woman must feel about a thing like this.
“I shall tell it her as if it wasn’t you and me,” said Hugh. “Oh, Peggy,” he cried, “we want you!”
She came.
“Once upon a time,” said Hugh, talking very fast, “there was a woman with an extraordinary ability for acting, and she and another man fell in love with each other, and he said, ‘I jolly well won’t have you acting any more now! You’ve got to attend to me.’ Wasn’t he right?”
Peggy had given one short gasp, but checked herself.
“Why, of course he was,” she said.