[p 92]
]He sat down on a chair.
‘Now,’ he said.
She sat down, too, just on the edge of the sofa by the sleeping child. She was concerned because a fly would hover round its face and distract her attention.
‘I went to Bayley’s this morning to get some notepaper printed,’ Larrie said, and paused. But Dot seemed to find nothing very remarkable in that, and looked merely attentive.
‘There was a proof of that on the counter,’ he continued, and threw a sheet of old English printing on pale green paper towards her.
She started up, vexation on her face.
‘Oh what a shame!’ she cried. She read it through standing up, and the knowledge that all the colours were straightway rubbed out of her beautiful picture, made two curves of disappointment show at her mouth corners.
‘Then it is your name?’ said Larrie, and his voice sounded positively faint.
Dot brightened a little. ‘Of course it is,’ she said, ‘I wish you hadn’t seen it though; [p 93] ]I was dying to surprise you, Larrie.’ Then she went up closer to him. ‘Aren’t you going to kiss your own pocket Madame Melba?’
She felt how flat the scene had fallen even as she spoke, and was fit to cry at the disappointment. Then she remembered Larrie’s anger a few minutes back, ‘But what made you so cross?’ she said.