The telephone bell rang. Miss Macpherson picked up the receiver; pushed the instrument across the desk. “It’s your wife, I think.”
“Peter”—the voice came faintly over the wire—“I just missed you at Victoria. Shall I bring the car down to the office?”
“Yes, do,” he answered.
The little scene was—could Peter but have realized it—very typical of war: women working with and for men, driving cars, running businesses, doing a thousand jobs which would have seemed impossible two years since. But Peter Jameson had no sense of drama; he accepted new conditions, as most Englishmen, with nothing more than a mild surprise.
“I wish you’d get me the private ledger, Miss Macpherson,” he said: and immersed in the “private ledger,” Patricia found him.
As she entered, tall, gauntleted, small toque low on her blond head, he looked up from his work; rose to greet her. They did not kiss: they were not of the breed that kisses before employés. But there was no condescension in Patricia’s, “How do you do, Miss Macpherson?”
“I shan’t be more than ten minutes, Pat,” Peter said. “You don’t mind waiting, do you?”
She sat there, looking at the two of them, the man in soldier’s uniform, bending over the account book, the middle-aged woman with the fountain-pen—holding her love for Peter in abeyance, recognizing that this was “business,” a mystery beyond her scope. And with that realization came a little flash of jealousy against the other woman who could help where the wife must sit useless.
Peter snapped-to the catch of the private-ledger; pulled the telephone across the desk; asked for a number.
“Mr. Reid in?”—Patricia heard—“No. Mr. George Reid. Gone for the day. Confound it. Is he free at ten o’clock tomorrow? Right. Yes, Mr. Jameson, Mr. Peter Jameson.”