“Try me.”
“Come along, Lawrie,” cried Gwen. “We’re having a regular, jolly old school-girl afternoon. You’ll find it an education gratis, and you can eat as much cake as you like. We are all eating as if we had never ate before, to make up for the times we went hungry at school.”
Lawrence sat down by Doreen, opposite to Paddy.
“Delighted,” he murmured. “Always thought the rôle of school-girl would suit me down to the ground. Touching this high shelf—don’t let me interrupt you, Paddy.”
Paddy looked furious and got scarlet in the face. She was determined she would not be friendly with Lawrence, and yet here she was, almost on intimate terms with his fiancée, and fairly caught as regards himself.
Gwen dropped her long lashes to hide a decided gleam of amusement, while Doreen, pouring out tea and noticing nothing, said, “Go on, Paddy, you needn’t mind Lawrence.”
“Of course not,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on her. “Why should she?”
Still Paddy bit her lip and hesitated. “It’s time I was going,” she said at last, very lamely, looking around for her gloves.
Gwen’s mouth twitched desperately at the corners and Doreen looked up in surprise. Doreen’s expression made Paddy pull herself together.
“It wasn’t really anything worth telling,” she said, “only that, instead of standing on something to make myself taller as I ought to have done, I tried to tilt the jar over into my hand, and while doing so the stopper flew out. The jar was full of black powder, and before I could help myself I had most of it in my face and over my hair. You never saw anything so awful as I looked. Brushing it off left long black streaks in all directions, and the taste on my lips was filthy; the three people waiting for their medicine nearly had convulsions, and the doctor came out to see what was the matter.”