Philip paused by the door.
“Really, do you mean that?” he said. “And have you got time? I hear you always have more orders than you can ever get through.”
Evelyn tossed his head with a quick, petulant gesture.
“You talk as if I was a tailor,” he said. “But you suggest to me the advisability of my getting apprentices to paint the uninteresting people for me, and I will sign them. That would satisfy a lot of them. Yes, I have more than I can do. But I could do Miss Ellington remarkably well. Shall I ask her to sit for me?”
“That would be rather original, the first time you saw her.”
“A good reason for doing it,” said Evelyn, hastily drinking another glass of port.
“But it would certainly give her a good reason for saying ‘No,’” remarked Philip.
Madge, it appeared, did not play bridge; her mother, at any rate, said she did not, and Evelyn Dundas, rather to his satisfaction, cut out. That feat happily accomplished, he addressed himself to Madge.
“Fancy a hermit playing bridge!” he said. “Does it not seem to you very inconsistent? Patience is the furthest he has any right to go.”
Madge got up.