“Astonishingly.”
“I wish you had come back in time to speak to her,” continued Gwen. “I’d like to be introduced.”
Meanwhile, Paddy walked down to Piccadilly Circus with Ethel Matheson, and then hurried back to get her ’bus in Oxford Street. On the way she dashed into a shop and bought some tomatoes, a favourite dish of her mother’s—true to her nationality, acting on the spur of the moment, blissfully regardless of the fact that she could have got the same article for half the money at the other end of her ’bus ride. As she hurried past Fuller’s Lawrence and Gwendoline came out, the latter catching sight of her instantly.
“There’s Paddy Adair!” she exclaimed. “Do stop her.”
Lawrence hesitated and in that second Paddy brushed too near a boy with a basket, the basket caught against her bag of tomatoes—carried no doubt in somewhat careless fashion—the paper split, and out sprawled the tomatoes all across the pavement in the midst of the rank and fashion of Regent Street.
“Christopher Columbus!” exclaimed Paddy under her breath and blushing crimson, but quite unable to help laughing, as she commenced diving for her belongings among the feet of the passers-by. A dark-eyed girl, enjoying the scrimmage immensely, rescued one from the gutter, while the man with her succeeded in getting three from various directions, and when Paddy at last turned to thank them, a lovely colour in her cheeks and a bewitching roguishness in her eyes, she found herself face to face with Lawrence Blake and his companion, each offering her a tomato.
CHAPTER XXXI
Paddy Makes a New Friend.
For one moment Paddy was utterly at a loss, and bit her lips in evident vexation, while the colour deepened still further in her face.
“How do you do, Paddy?” said Lawrence. “You seem to be in difficulties as usual. May I introduce you to your other timely helper, Miss Grant-Carew?”