“This isn’t a branch of the Y.W.C.A., Cliffe,” Antonia tried amusedly to check his exuberant overflow of conviviality. But Cliffe ran on.
“No—let me see—Zoe shows off best in her own Palais Royale flat—she needs all the doors and cupboards to be really at her best. I’ll give a tea-party there next Saturday. Blair Stevenson may be up on leave, and has asked me to let him meet that singer woman I told him about, with hair just like mine! You must meet her too, Miss Marcus—you positively must.”
“You mean La llorraine—oh, I know her well.” Deb was glad to have found one name familiar among all these pattering new names.
“Good. You’ll come to the tea-party? Antonia will bring you—it’s in a street rather tricky to find. I’m keen on backing Zoe against La llorraine for sheer verbal energy. Take the field bar none. For this evening we’ll just have Gillian and Winifred and Theo. Shall I ’phone them, Antonia, or will you?”
“You can,” said Antonia. “No—bother! Gillian is away till Tuesday, and Winny without her sends me to sleep. And Theo Pandos is a bounder—Deb wouldn’t care about him.”
“That brings the party down to the present three. At least, I suppose I can stop to supper, Antonia, as you’re not going out after all? You haven’t invited me yet.”
“Of course you can. Don’t you know that a studio girl always keeps a stray tin of sardines in the cupboard?”
“And a black and emerald cushion on the divan. Curse it, what I’ve had to suffer dodging the lure of the generic studio cushion. But yours is hardly the generic studio, Antonia. You actually use it for the quaint and unusual purpose of painting pictures in it. The girl of nowadays rents a studio to picnic in by moonlight, or because it has such a ducksome musician’s gallery to sleep in, or a parquet floor for fox-trotting, or an acoustic. Have you a studio, Miss Marcus? Excuse me not calling you by your Christian name for a few weeks, but the whimsical Bohemian vagabond, a species whom I abhor, always uses Christian names within three minutes of introduction.”
“Or else a charming invented name,” Deb supplemented. “I’ll call you ‘Big-Brother-Man’ and you shall call me ‘All-Alone-Girl.’”
“Or you call me ‘Daddy Longlegs’ and I’ll call you ‘Peg o’ my Heart.’”