“No, but what if she does?” asked Pen, having no such dependence on her aunt’s forbearing.
Sir Richard smiled rather sardonically. “I am not, perhaps, the best person in the world of whom to make—ah—impertinent demands.”
Pen’s eyes lit with sudden laughter. “Oh, I do hope you will talk to her like that, and look at her just so! And if she brings Fred with her, he will be quite overcome, I dare say, to meet you face to face. For you must know that he admires you excessively. He tries to tie his cravat in a Wyndham Fall, even!”
“That, in itself, I find an impertinence,” said Sir Richard.
She nodded, and lifted a hand to her own cravat. “What do you think of mine, sir?”
“I have carefully refrained from thinking about it at all. Do you really wish to know?”
“But I have arranged it just as you did!”
“Good God!” said Sir Richard faintly. “My poor deluded child!”
“You are teasing me! At least it was not ill enough tied to make you rip it off my neck as you did when you first met me!”
“You will recall that we left the inn in haste this morning,” he explained.