“Like what?”
The tone was hardly encouraging for all its amiability, but young Ledyard pushed doggedly ahead.
“Like that—anything serious or intimate or real. You make it darned difficult, let me tell you.”
“Then why do it?”
“Oh, not because I want to!” His angry, tired young face bore unmistakable testimony to that. “Believe me, if I were consulting my own pleasure I’d have told you to go to the devil the first time you tried any of that condescending impertinence of yours on me.”
“Is it beside the mark to ask you just whose pleasure you are consulting, then?”
Young Ledyard set his teeth hard.
“Pattie’s,” he said, very distinctly.
The Honourable Tony did not stir, but the eyes that he fixed on Pattie’s brother went suddenly and incredibly black. After a long pause he repeated, evenly and courteously,
“Pattie’s?”