“Oh, how flippant! How could we ever get anywhere without them, considering how frequently we don’t, even with them? Ah, now for the book!”
Catherine turned hurriedly over the pages of “Where am I?” and found where she was. She breathed a sigh of relief as she closed it again.
“Thank Heaven!” she said, “because otherwise I really shouldn’t have tasted food since yesterday until tea-time. Send the carriage back, please. It’s only the bazaar at St. Ursula’s, and I told them I almost certainly couldn’t go. Besides, the Princess is opening it, so I needn’t. I should only have to stand up and curtsey, and agree that the day is vile.”
“It isn’t,” said Jim.
“I know; but one can’t argue. Oh, the carriage must come back in twenty minutes,” she added to the footman.
Jim helped himself largely to the next course.
“Catherine, that is the first time you have ever disappointed me,” he said. “I thought you would always rather go somewhere and do something than sit down and be comfortable. I thought you never even wanted to be unemployed.”
“I don’t really,” said she. “I only think I do.”
“But, anyhow, you prefer to have lunch than go to St Ursula’s.”
“Ah, you don’t understand! I have got to be at the Industrial Sale at three, in order to open it myself, and I literally haven’t enough minutes to get down to St Ursula’s, and stand and grin, and get back to Portland Place by three. It couldn’t happen. My anxiety was that the quarter-past two engagement might leave me time, if I had no lunch, to get to Portland Place at three. It won’t. Hurrah!”