In a very few hours, of course, the Kendals, and Lady Annabel, and everybody else would know that Mrs. Harter’s husband had come to Cross Loman. Bill Patch, in all probability, would know it even sooner.
“Martyn, are you going to tell him?” said Sallie.
“I suppose so. She told me to make her excuses, as she called it, and that’s a perfectly good excuse, if ever there was one.”
Sallie nodded her head, looking very thoughtful. I felt perfectly certain—and the certainty partly amused and partly disgusted me—that whenever Martyn made his announcement Sallie fully intended to be within earshot of it. While they were still talking, Patch himself came up, looking very earnest and very, very young.
“I think it’s going to be all right, you know,” said he, without preamble. “That last act really went uncommonly well this time. If only Kendal remembers his words, and above all doesn’t try any impromptu funniness, we ought to be all right.”
He turned and looked at Martyn through those queer thick lenses of his.
“What about trying over that stage fight of ours once more? I still have to learn to die, as the hymn book says.”
“Come on then.”
He and Martyn went off together, and I thought Sallie looked disappointed.
“Go and help them, my dear,” I said ironically. “You’ve still a chance of being in at the death.”