Geraldine’s sallow face flushed. “You don’t know much about it, do you, considering that we never see you nowadays. I’m not one for talking much about my own affairs, either, so far as I’m aware. It’s a misfortune, really, to be as reserved as I am. I often wish I wasn’t!”
It was unprecedented, in Elsie’s experience, to hear Geraldine setting forth a claim, however obliquely, to be considered interesting. Elsie looked at her in astonishment.
“She must be gone on this fellow,” she thought, and without the slightest compunction she immediately put forth all her own powers to attract Morrison’s notice and admiration to herself.
The task proved to be as easy as it was congenial. In a very little while, Elsie and young Morrison were talking and joking together, and it was only an occasional, spasmodic, and quite evidently conscientious effort from Morrison that from time to time caused Geraldine to be included in the conversation.
Morrison told Elsie that he travelled for a big firm of silk merchants in the City, and was very little in London.
“How did you and Geraldine meet, then? I thought you were in the same office as her during the war,” said Elsie sharply.
“Just for six months I was, and then I got this job in the place of a man who’d joined up. I was under age for joining up myself, worse luck,” said the youth.
Then he must be younger than she was herself, Elsie reflected, surprised. She felt oddly touched by the thought.
She looked at Morrison, and found that he was looking at her with admiration evident in his dark eyes.
Elsie allowed her eyes to dwell for a second on his before she broke the momentary silence. “What about tea, Geraldine?”