Peggy stopped short. Priscilla had jumped. Mr. Kennedy's conventional smile had changed to startled recognition. "Why, you know each other," Peggy cried.
"Only—why, surely, Peggy, you remember."
Peggy's vague, irritating certainty of something familiar in Mr. Kennedy's face was suddenly transformed to recollection. "Oh, of course. The Green Parrot."
"Oh, of course! The Green Parrot!" mocked Graham, who had risen on Priscilla's entrance, and now stood looking from one to another of the trio. "Makes it perfectly clear."
They took their seats, and Peggy explained, helped out by suggestions from the others. As they recalled the absurd experience, the three narrators went off into fits of laughter, but the audience maintained a dignified calm.
"Take my word for it, John, it's an inscrutable sex. Now, I would have sworn that this young woman hadn't a thought I didn't share, and look what she's been keeping from me, lo! these many months. When we're alone I shall expect you to give me a full account of what really happened."
For some reason the discovery that Graham's friend, Kennedy, was the young man whose coffee cup had been invaded by Priscilla's roll seemed to put him at once on the footing of an old acquaintance. They had a very jolly evening, and it was not till after ten that Priscilla said, "Graham, I think you'd better take me home, now. I've got a busy day before me."
"You have indeed, poor dear," Peggy cried. "I expect you to finish addressing those invitations and do any number of errands. These are trying times for my friends, Mr. Kennedy. They have hardly a minute in the twenty-four hours that they can call their own."
The young man smiled at her in the abstracted fashion of one whose thoughts are on something else. "Won't you let me be your escort?" he asked Priscilla. "It would give me the greatest pleasure."
"Thanks, but it's only a step, and my going early won't break up Graham's evening, for he'll come directly back." She softened her refusal by giving him her hand and saying pleasantly, "I'm glad to have met you properly at last, with a real introduction, you know."