"That was a cab, surely," said Lady Rossiter. "I suppose it's Miss Marchrose. That seems rather an expensive item for her."
"How dear of you, Lady Rossiter! I do believe you always think of every little thing."
On this extravagant assertion of Miss Easter's her brother returned to the drawing-room with his two remaining guests.
Mr. Douglas Garrett was a tall, saturnine youth, whose conversation principally consisted in emphasising the gulf separating the rest of humanity from himself and some persons unspecified, but amalgamated under the monosyllable "we."
"We poor motor-cyclists can't hope to be as punctual as the rest of the world," he observed to Lady Rossiter, to whom he was presented by Iris as "My great friend, Mr. Garrett, dear Lady Rossiter, but everyone calls him Douglas."
"You will hardly need to be told that I have Scotch blood in me, after that," gravely said Mr. Garrett. "We Kelts are faithful to the traditional old names of the Clan."
"Oh," said Iris, her head more on one side than ever. "Isn't there some poem about, 'Douglas, Douglas, tender and true'?"
Mr. Garrett inclined his head towards her in acknowledgment and murmured something about "we lovers of the dear old bard" which nobody seemed quite to catch.
The room, not over large, now appeared to be rather uncomfortably crowded, and pervaded, moreover, by a growing consciousness that something must be happening to the dinner.
Lady Rossiter said to Mark, "I always love a little house, especially in winter. They are so much warmer," at the same time holding a newspaper between herself and the fire, the size of which was out of all proportion to the room and to the number of its occupants.