“What’s this I hear about taking my cats?” she said jovially. “You’re welcome to everything in my house, Mr. Dysart, but I’ll set the police on you if you take my poor cats!”
“Oh, but I assure you—”
“He’s only going to photo them,” said Christopher and Francie together.
“Do you hear them, Miss Dysart?” continued Charlotte, fumbling for her latch key, “conspiring together to rob a poor lone woman of her only live stock!”
She opened the door, and as her visitors entered the hall they caught a glance of Susan’s large, stern countenance regarding them with concentrated suspicion through the rails of the staircase.
“My beauty-boy!” shouted his mistress, as he vanished upstairs. “Steal him if you can, Mr. Dysart!”
Miss Hope-Drummond looked rather more uninterested than is usual in polite society. When she had left the hammock, slung in the shade beside the tennis-ground at Bruff, it had not been to share Mr. Corkran’s hymn-book; still less had it been to walk from the church to Tally Ho between Pamela and a woman whom, from having regarded as merely outrée and incomprehensible, she had now come to look upon as rather impertinent. Irish society was intolerably mixed, she decided, as she sniffed the various odours of the Tally Ho hall, and, with some sub-connection of ideas, made up her mind that photography was a detestable and silly pursuit for men. While these thoughts were passing beneath her accurately curled fringe, Miss Mullen opened the drawing-room door, and, as they walked in, a short young man in light grey clothes arose from the most comfortable chair to greet them.
There was surprise and disfavour in Miss Mullen’s eye as she extended her hand to him.
“This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Hawkins,” she said.
“Yes,” answered Mr. Hawkins cheerfully, taking the hand and doing his best to shake it at the height prescribed by existing fashion, “I thought it would be; Miss Fitzpatrick asked me to come in this afternoon; didn’t you?” addressing himself to Francie. “I got rather a nasty jar when I heard you were all out, but I thought I’d wait for a bit. I knew Miss Dysart always gives ’em fits at the choir practice. All the same, you know, I should have begun to eat the cake if you hadn’t come in.”