Anna was a little puzzled, but she only laughed.
“Perhaps, as I’ve only just arrived,” she remarked, “I might be forgiven if I do not change my skirt. I packed so hurriedly that it will take me a long time to find my things.”
“Certainly,” Mrs. White assured her. “Certainly. I’ll mention it. You’re tired, of course. This is your room. The gong will go at seven-thirty. Don’t be late if you can help it.”
Anna was not late, but her heart sank within her when she entered the drawing-room. It was not a hopeful looking group. Two or three podgy-looking old men with wives to match, half-a-dozen overdressed girls, and a couple of underdressed American ones, who still wore the clothes in which they had been tramping half over London since breakfast time. A sprinkling of callow youths, and a couple of pronounced young Jews, who were talking loudly together in some unintelligible jargon of the City. What had she to do with such as these? She had hard work to keep a smiling face, as Mrs. White, who had risen to greet her, proceeded with a formal, and from Anna’s point of view, a wholly unnecessary round of introductions. And then suddenly—a relief. A young man—almost a boy, slight, dark, and with his brother’s deep grey eyes—came across the room to her.
“You must be the Miss Pellissier of whom David has told me so much,” he said, shyly. “I am very glad that you have come here. I heard from David about you only this morning.”
“You are marvellously like your brother,” Anna said, beaming upon him. “I have a letter for you, and no end of messages. Where can we sit down and talk?”
He led her across the room towards a window recess, in which a tall, fair young man was seated with an evening paper in his hand.
“Let me introduce my friend to you,” Courtlaw said. “Arthur, this is Miss Pellissier—Mr. Brendon. Brendon and I are great chums,” he went on nervously. “We are clerks in the same bank. I don’t think that the rest of the people here like us very well, do they, Arthur, so we’re obliged to be friends.”
Anna shook hands with Brendon—a young man also, but older and more self-possessed than Sydney Courtlaw.