"The rest of us!" exclaimed Mrs. Fox.
"Yes," replied her husband. "I mean you, and Mrs. Easterfield, and myself, and the rest. That young woman's indeterminate methods of fascination interfere with all of us."
"I don't exactly see how they interfere with me," said Mrs. Fox rather stiffly.
"If the carriage had been filled, as was expected," said her husband, "I might have had the pleasure of driving you in a buggy."
She turned to him with a smile. "Immediately after I spoke," she said, "I imagined you might be thinking of something of that kind."
Mrs. Easterfield was not a woman to wait for things to happen in their own good time. If possible, she liked to hurry them up. In this Olive and Hemphill affair there was really nothing to wait for; if she left them to themselves there would be no happenings. As soon as was possible, she took Olive into her own little room, where she kept her writing-table, and into whose sacred precincts her secretary was not allowed to penetrate.
"Now, then," said she, "what do you think of Mr. Hemphill?"
"I don't think of him at all," said Olive, a little surprised. "Is there anything about him to think of?"
"He sat by you at luncheon," said Mrs. Easterfield.
"I know that," said Olive, "and he was better than an empty chair. I hate sitting by empty chairs."