“My mother goes in for fads. Nobody else has ever dared to call me Johnny.”
Mabel, always easily mollified, put her arms about his unresponsive neck. “If you had told me before, I never would have called you Jackie, although I love it, and John is so horridly formal. I shall feel as if I were addressing my husband’s double, or something. Do you really hate it—Jackie?”
“Yes.”
“Well! . . . I won’t any more. But you must do something for me in return. You must take me to the country to-day.”
“I really could not take the risk.”
“Then take me to Kensington Gardens.”
“I am so sorry—I think I told you I had several engagements. You see—you are generally occupied all day, with one thing or another. I have been thrown on my own resources, and now I cannot get out of these engagements I have made.”
“But you always used to come home to luncheon.”
“Now that you have so many American friends in London I did not fancy you would miss me; and as several of my own old friends are in town, I thought it a good opportunity to show them some attentions.”
“Why don’t you bring them to the house?”