‘I was wondering what Stephen—your friend Stephen—would say if he saw us now.’
‘Poor old Jack-in-the-Box,’ said Christopher with easy irreverence. ‘I suppose he’d think us worldly.’
She leaned forward. ‘What?’ she asked, her face rippling with a mixture of laughter and dismay, ‘what was it you called him?’
‘I said poor old Jack-in-the-Box. So he is. I saw him in his box on Sunday at St. Paul’s. I went, of course. I’d go anywhere on the chance of seeing you. And there he was, poor old back number, gassing away about love. What on earth he thinks he knows about it——’
‘Perhaps——’ She hesitated. ‘Perhaps he knows a great deal. He has got’—she hesitated again—‘he has got a quite young wife.’
‘Has he? Then he ought to be ashamed of himself. Old bone.’
She stared at him. ‘Old what?’ she asked.
‘Bone,’ said Christopher. ‘You can’t get love out of a bone.’
‘But—but he loves her very much,’ she said.