“You have not,” with flat contradiction. She felt instinctively he was getting lover-like, and felt she must repress him at any cost.
“How have I not? I certainly knew you when you were a month old. I was offered the supreme privilege of carrying you round the garden, but you were so like a black-beetle I funked it.”
“There were the three years when you were abroad,” with a show of indifference.
“Ah, to be sure, I didn’t know you then.” He smiled a little—that old whimsical smile. “Had I done so there would probably have been no second trip abroad, and no deadly feud, and Mourne Lodge might have had a second Boadicea rampaging through its stately rooms as mistress.”
She quickened her steps. “I must get my ’bus now, or I shall be late. It is no use attempting to attract the attention of Gwen and her giant.”
“You bring me down to earth with such thuds,” with a plaintive air. “I dream of stately halls, and modern heroines gracing ancient shrines, and you annihilate both the vision and the poetry in one merciless blow, metaphorically flinging a Shepherd’s Bush ’bus at my head. As it is quite out of the question for me to inflict myself upon the lovers, I must take you home in a taxi.”
“I am going in a ’bus,” willfully. “If you want a cab drive, go to your club,” and she turned her steps resolutely toward the road.
“I see you mean to be unmanageable—but I can wait—my time will come. If I see you getting pale and ill-looking, it will come sooner than you think.”
“I don’t think at all. I haven’t time—at least not to think of you. My bottles and prescriptions interest me far more.”
“Liar,” he murmured humorously—looking hard into her face—and her mobile mouth twitched irresistibly as she crossed the road to her ’bus.