“Don’t look so miserable, Charlie, but promise that you’ll do it for her. In fact, I have promised. Why, of course you know all the models in London.”
“I don’t. I hate London models.”
“Well,” said Mrs Marchmont with swift inconsequence, “I don’t suppose you expect a young girl to prowl about those places where they live?”
Everitt shrugged his shoulders. “What is it to me?”
“Charlie,” repeated his cousin, with a kind of shocked disappointment in her voice, “if you will not take such an absurd fraction of trouble when I ask you—”
“My dear Mary,” he said, turning quickly, “if you ask me on your own account—”
“Of course I do. I ask it as a very personal favour. If you knew Kitty Lascelles, it would be unnecessary to put it on that ground,” returned Mrs Marchmont, still keeping up a little air of dignity.
“I apologise a hundred times. What is it that Miss Lascelles wants?”
“A model—an Italian model.”
“Man or woman?”