She waited for no reply, aware of old that Julian invariably professed a supreme indifference to the outlook of the College staff when outside their College walls, but trailed into the wide, cool drawing-room containing little furniture and an abundance of roses and heliotrope.
Lady Rossiter arranged the flowers herself, and did so exquisitely. She often said that flowers were literally a necessity to her—an opinion frequently held by those whose financial situation has never compelled them to regard flowers as an alternative to, let us say, butter for breakfast, in which case the relative value of the commodities in question is apt to undergo alteration.
Poised over her bowls of pink roses, Lady Rossiter was taken by surprise when her guests eventually arrived.
Sir Julian strongly suspected that had the drawing-room window given on to the drive, instead of on to the green bowling-alley, his wife would herself have met her visitors at the hospitably opened hall door, thus sparing the dignity of Horber, undemocratic as only a butler can be, from the announcement which he stiffly made out of the extreme corners of his mouth.
"Miss Farmer, Miss Sandiloe, and Mr. Cooper, m'lady."
Miss Farmer, in a green linen which accorded singularly ill with a sallow complexion; Miss Sandiloe, girlish, pretty and full of giggles that threatened disaster to a tightly-fitting and transparent white muslin; and Mr. Cooper, obviously in the toils of Miss Sandiloe, came one by one into the drawing-room, where Lady Rossiter, in point of fact, had never intended them to penetrate at all.
Sir Julian, watching the entry in an angle of the hall window-seat which he trusted to be invisible from the drawing-room, could not forbear the tribute of an unwilling admiration to his wife's handling of the rather embarrassed trio.
"Ah, but how nice! Miss Farmer, of course we've met before; and Mr. Cooper"—a shake of the hand to each. "And——?" A pause, with pleasantly uplifted eyebrows, in front of Miss Sandiloe.
"Miss Sandiloe," Miss Farmer supplied, and added rather haltingly, obviously unsure of the etiquette governing the position:
"The junior teacher of shorthand, Lady Rossiter."