"Oh, fossil cats, you know, and all that sort of thing," explained George chivalrously. "But, of course—you, Mrs. Delville," he hastened now to appease me, "would heaps rather hear about Paris fashions, I know. So if you-people really should want me in May I'll try my best, I promise you, to remember every latest wrinkle of lace, or feather. Only, of course," he explained with typical conscientiousness, "in the museums and the libraries one doesn't see just—of course— the——"
"On the contrary, Mr. Keats," I interrupted hectically, "there is no subject in the world that interests me more—at the moment—than Mummies. And by the second week in May that interest will have assumed proportions that——"
"S-sh!" admonished my Husband. "But really, George," he himself hastened to cut in, "if you could come to us the second week in May——"
"May?" considered George. "Second week? Why, certainly I will." And bolted for the library, while my Husband and I in a perfectly irresistible impulse drew aside on the curbing to watch him disappear.
Equally unexplainably three totally non-concerned women turned also to watch him.
"It's his shoulders," I ventured. "The amazing virility of his shoulders contrasted with the stinginess of his smile."
"Stinginess nothing!" snapped my Husband. "Devil take him!"
"He may—yet," I mused as we swung into step again.
So now we had nothing to worry about—or rather no uncertainty to worry about except the May Girl and the Singing Voice.
"The Singing Voice," my Husband argued, "might be picked up by good fortune at most any cabaret show or choral practise. Not any singing voice would do, of course. It must be distinctly poignant. But even poignancy may be found sometimes where you least expect it,—some reasonably mature, faintly disappointed sort of voice, usually, lilting with unquestionable loveliness, just this side of real professional success.