"If I were to make head or tail of you," Pat exclaimed laughing, "it should be a fuzzy furry grey tail that was cocked upright ... and between your wee paws I should just love to pop a nut! I'm delighted to meet you, Miss Gurney; and since Graham has started us on odious personalities, let me confess that never in my life have I encountered anyone quite so fascinatingly like a squirrel!"
Mona's hands flew up again, accompanying a laugh that was midway between a squeak and a gurgle: "Oh dear!—and Alex always used to call me a Puritan."
"A Puritan squirrel expresses it exactly." But a lull fell upon conversation at the mention of Vincent Alexander. He had been popular among these of his friends who had pierced beneath his extreme outward decorum.
The lull was broken by whir of the telephone bell.
"Let me answer it!" Guy Burnett exclaimed, who had that instant hobbled in with Ran Wyman. "It will be like a taste of old times." For he was still in his blue hospital suit; and far too weak and white to think just yet of returning to the firm; though rumour whispered that presently his father intended to buy him a partnership with Leslie Campbell.... "Hello! Hello!... Come back, you blighter—what d'you want to run away for?... Hello-o-o-o!... Carr, there was a time when I could have betted on this being an order for 'Piccadilly.'"
"Yer can bet yer shirt it's fur the 'Log-Book' now," put in the Heart-breaker, raising a damp crimson face from his parcel-packing, and speaking in tones that were husky with pride and passion. "It's that bloomin' 'Log-Book' 'ere all day long, till we're fair fed up with it. Really we are, Miss O'Neill."
"... Hello!... Yes—yes.... All right. By to-morrow?—certainly, nothing easier.... Hi! no! wait a minute...." Burnett turned to Campbell who had thrust a head round the door of his sanctum. "'Evening, sir—I say, I'm not up-to-date any more in these matters. Hale's are asking if the hundred copies of 'The Log-Book' are ready for 'em yet, according to promise?"
"Nay, we can't get the edeetions through at that pace. Enquire if they happen to ken there's a European War in prawgress!" with terrific scorn.
Burnett did so; and then with a cordial "good-bye," replaced the receiver.
"It's really rather a miracle to find any sort of book-interest surviving after two years of topsy-turvydom," Ran Wyman commented, from the table on to which he had swung himself beside Pat. "We're a marvellous nation; I expected a landslide in literature; and here we are, flourishing!"