Meanwhile Maud had made her way along the crowded platform to a point where two girls in Panama hats and long white blanket coats, and carrying tennis racquets under their arms, were standing together, and as soon as she reached their side, they all three plunged into an eager conversation in the interest of which it was soon evident that Margaret was forgotten.
Just, however, as Margaret's cabman was beginning to show signs of impatience, the bicycles for which the two girls had been waiting were extricated from the van, and with a hasty nod to Maud, they pushed their way out of the crowd.
"The Cedars, Pelham Road, please," Maud said as she got into the cab. "Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Carson. But I wanted to speak to the Finches. They had just got back from the Surbiton Tournament. They had done awfully well both of them. The tall one, Anna's the best. Fancy, wasn't it stupendous luck for her! She got into the third round of the open singles and met Mrs. Lambert Chambers. Of course, she was beaten hollow. Didn't even get a game. But wasn't it luck meeting her?"
Now, as Margaret had not the very vaguest notion who Mrs. Lambert Chambers was, or why it should be considered such extraordinary good fortune to meet her, she gave such a vague assent to the question that Maud turned to stare at her with undisguised amazement in her eyes.
"You don't mean to say," she exclaimed, "that you have never even heard of Mrs. Lambert Chambers!"
"I don't seem to remember her name," confessed Margaret, blushing crimson.
"Why, I mean the famous Mrs. Lambert Chambers. The tennis player. Miss Douglas that was, you know."
"Oh!" said poor Margaret again. Then she added lamely, "I—I suppose she must play very nicely."
"Play nicely!" ejaculated Maud, still surveying her companion with a direct glance that the latter found very embarrassing. "Great Scott, what a funny way of putting it! Where on earth were you brought up! And never even to have heard of her! Why, you will be saying next that you never heard of C. B. Fry or Braid, or Grace, or the Dohertys."
But Margaret, in the face of the scorn she already provoked, was not disposed to confess to such depths of ignorance, and she murmured a vague reply that might have meant anything. However, the few unintelligible sounds that passed her lips might not have been sufficient to save her from further cross examination on the subject of her knowledge of tennis had not Maud's attention been attracted by the same two girls who, speeding past on their bicycles, called out to her not to forget to-morrow.