“He has been away for some time, hasn’t he?” said Mrs. Kennedy, looking from one to the other with piquant eyes that yearned for information.
“Four years with the Lancers in India,” Tom boomed out again.
The Kennedys were relieved. They’d got hold of something. They both sat down, and it was obvious that they gathered themselves together for new efforts.
I did likewise. I realized that I must be biographical to a reasonable extent—just enough to satisfy curiosity, without giving the impression that I was sitting down to tell my life-story the way the heroine does in the first act of a play.
“He arrived only last Saturday,” I said, “and you may imagine how pleased I was to be able to bring him to-night, in answer to your kind invitation.”
“Only too glad he could come,” murmured Mrs. Kennedy, oblivious of the terrified side-glance that her husband cast in her direction. “Very fortunate that you had this one evening disengaged.”
“I’m taking him about everywhere,” I continued, with girlish loquacity. “People had begun to think that Major Thatcher was a myth, and I’m showing them that there’s a good deal of him and he’s very much alive. For four years, you know, I’ve been living here, first in those miserable lodgings in Half Moon Street, and after that in my flat—you know it—on Gower Street. A nice little place enough, but much nicer now, with Harry in it.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Kennedy, as sympathetically as was compatible with her eagerness to pounce upon such crumbs of information as I let drop. “How dull these four years have been for you!”
“Dull!” I echoed, “dull is not the word!” And I gave my eyes an expressive, acrobatic roll toward the ceiling.
“She couldn’t have stood it out there,” said Tom, in an unexpected bass growl. “Too hot! Ethel can’t stand the heat—never could.”