“Of course not. I should be much happier if you’d only sit down till lunch,” said Morris with truth. The exhausted Minnie sank down thankfully, murmuring “A so-fia is always a luxury, isn’t it,” and the next moment bounding agitatedly to her feet as the gong reverberated through the hall, and Frederick Tregaskis was heard emerging from the study.
Minnie looked at her large earthy hands with an expression of horror, muttered something about would these little hands never be clean, and fled.
It was with a sense almost of fatality, as though such a thing must inevitably happen where Miss Blandflower was concerned, that Morris watched, without having time to prevent it, a collision between her and her host at the foot of the stairs.
“Oh, Mr. Tregaskis,” shrieked Minnie, “I beg your pardon—I’d no idea—so stupid of me.”
“Do not apologize,” said Frederick, in tones of ice and casting a look of concentrated venom at the overwhelmed Miss Blandflower. “And pray do not be late for luncheon.”
“I’ve been gardening,” she gasped, displaying the trophies of toil in unattractively blackened finger-nails and hardened palms.
“So I perceive. I believe the gong has sounded?”
“Yes, oh yes. I feel I’ve earned my lunch,” cried Minnie, disappearing as fast as she could.
“My wife’s protégé,” remarked Frederick, as usual carefully disassociating himself from his spouse, “has, to my certain knowledge, made that remark before every meal for the past fourteen years.”
“I’m sure it’s a very true one, sir,” said Morris with what he supposed to be a ready courtesy, and only the expression of rather sardonic amusement which his host disconcertingly turned upon him at intervals throughout the meal, betrayed to Morris that his ready adaptability had led him to make an almost too apropos rejoinder to Frederick Tregaskis’ peculiar form of pleasantry.