“No; he plays cricket or hockey then.”
“Then may I have a Saturday afternoon?”
“It would be jolly;” and a swift gleam in her eyes told him she meant it.
“Very well. I shall consider that a promise. The first Saturday I can arrange, we’ll run down to some little place on the coast, and get some sea air. And if you feel inclined to write me a letter between now and then, send it to York Chambers, Jermyn Street.”
He pulled up, and instantly she exclaimed in haste:
“Oh, there’s my bus. Good-bye, thanks awfully; I must fly”; and before he could get in another word, he saw her clambering on to a motor-omnibus, with the utmost unconcern for his sudden, astonished solitariness.
“Gad!… what a woman she’ll be one day,” was his comment. “If she’d a hundred thousand pounds I wouldn’t mind marrying her myself; she’d never let a chap get bored. I’ll warrant,” He moved slowly down Piccadilly. “Most of them do,” he cogitated; “it doesn’t seem as if there were one woman in a thousand who didn’t soon become a bore. Heigh-ho, but debts are more boring still sometimes, and I want a fifty-thousand cheque badly.”
CHAPTER XV
When Hal went to tell Lorraine of her adventure she found her a victim of the prevailing malady, kept indoors two days with influenza. She was not in bed, but lying on a sofa, by a small fire, looking very frail and ill. Hal did not say much, as Lorraine disliked fussing, but her heart smote her to think she had been absent two days while her friend was a prisoner.
“Why didn’t you tell Jean to ’phone me?” she asked. “I would have got here somehow.”