[p232]
“A woman without a waistcoat pocket for her fountain-pen has always seemed such a pathetic object to me,” Hugh said. “When you were a business woman, K, it often moved me to internal tears to notice the disadvantage you were at in this respect.”
Kate acknowledged the disadvantage.
“Though I did stick to a skirt pocket long after the dressmakers had declared them anathema,” she said, “but there was always the danger of sitting on your pen or having it leak a wide black mark in the back width of your best frock. Even the sacred repository behind the ear that will lodge a penny pen refuses to accommodate a stout and slippery fountain one. But with that arrangement she will be able to make notes all day.”
Hugh hastened to display a miniature note-book, also made to hang suspended from the waist.
“She will be armed at all points, you see,” he said, “and the minute she sees men like columns walking, as some one says, she can jot them down.”
“But what are all the other things?” asked Kate, pointing to several still unaccounted-for parcels and hampers standing about the verandah just where the driver had set them down.
“Oh, by George, yes,” said Hugh. “You [p233] must look after those things, K, or they won’t keep. It’s to-morrow’s dinner.”
“To-morrow’s fiddlestick!” said Kate unbelievingly.
“’Tis, I assure you,” said Hugh; “I’m giving a grand picnic to-morrow at the Falls to celebrate my safe return. Thought of it in bed last night, telephoned the X.Y.Z. Company to pack a bit of lunch that would keep a day and to meet the train with it, and there you are,” he waved his hand at the hampers.
“A bit of lunch!” said Kate sarcastically. “Are you sure there is enough there to take the edge off our appetites?”