"Who is it? Let me speak, Peggy?" Collingwood said.
Peggy looked at him. "Oh, how you startled me!" she cried, with a little shriek of alarm and embarrassment. Then without a further word she fluttered towards the door of her bedroom, dropping the receiver of the telephone, which hung by its twisted cord and swung this way and that.
Roderick Collingwood took a couple of quick, decisive steps to the wall. He caught up the receiver.
"Hello! That you, Ellerdine? Yes, just finished supper. What? What? 2.34 to-night—I mean this morning? What time do you reach Paris? What?—five o'clock?"
He turned round to Peggy, who was standing by her bedroom door. "They are coming on here," he said.
"Now?" the girl asked.
"Yes! they get here at five." He caught up the receiver again and pressed it to his ear, leaning forward to the mouthpiece.
"I say, Ellerdine—I say, why not wait for us at Chalons? What? You have decided not to go on? Very well. We will wait for you."
He placed the receiver of the telephone back upon its rest, and turned the handle to ring off. Then he looked at Peggy, walking slowly towards her as he spoke.
"Ellerdine is vexed," he said.