“I wish you would come and do it yourself,” said the lady. “But I suppose there is no use attempting to force you. If you change your mind, remember that we shall be here.”
She left the young man preparing a cigarette, and joined Daireen and the major, who were sitting far astern: the girl with that fiction of a fiction still in her hand; her companion with a cheroot that was anything but insubstantial in his fingers.
“My dear child,” whispered Mrs. Crawford, “I am so glad you took your own way and would not allow me to choose your dress for you. I could never have dreamt of anything so perfect and——yes, it is far beyond what I could have composed.”
Mrs. Crawford thought it better on the whole not to transfer to Daireen the expression of gratitude Mr. Glaston had begged to be conveyed to her. She had an uneasy consciousness that such a message coming to one who was as yet unacquainted with Mr. Glaston might give her the impression that he was inclined to have some of that unhappy conceit, with the possession of which Mrs. Crawford herself had accredited the race generally.
“Miss Gerald is an angel in whatever dress she may wear,” said the major gallantly. “What is dress, after all?” he asked. “By gad, my dear, the finest women I ever recollect seeing were in Burmah, and all the dress they wore was the merest——”
“Major, you forget yourself,” cried his wife severely.
The major pulled vigorously at the end of his moustache, grinning and bobbing his head towards the doctor.
“By gad, my dear, the recollection of those beauties would make any fellow forget not only himself but his own wife, even if she was as fine a woman as yourself.”
The doctor's face relapsed into its accustomed frown after he had given a responsive grin and a baritone chuckle to the delicate pleasantry of his old comrade.