"And just you two alone? Do you call that enjoying yourselves tremendously?"
"It will do for me. No doubt I oughtn't in modesty to speak for poor Florence."
"It isn't fair to her; you ought to invite some one to meet her."
"Do you mean you, Peter?" the girl asked, turning to him quickly and with a look that vanished the instant he caught it.
"Try me. I'll come like a shot."
"That's kind," said Biddy, dropping her hands and now resting her eyes on him gratefully. She remained in this position as if under a charm; then she jerked herself back to her work with the remark: "Florence will like that immensely."
"I'm delighted to please Florence—your description of her's so attractive!" Sherringham laughed. And when his companion asked him if he minded there not being a great feast, because when her mother went away she allowed her a fixed amount for that sort of thing and, as he might imagine, it wasn't millions—when Biddy, with the frankness of their pleasant kinship, touched anxiously on this economic point (illustrating, as Peter saw, the lucidity with which Lady Agnes had had in her old age to learn to recognise the occasions when she could be conveniently frugal) he answered that the shortest dinners were the best, especially when one was going to the theatre. That was his case to-night, and did Biddy think he might look to Miss Tressilian to go with them? They'd have to dine early—he wanted not to miss a moment.
"The theatre—Miss Tressilian?" she stared, interrupted and in suspense again.
"Would it incommode you very much to dine say at 7.15 and accept a place in my box? The finger of Providence was in it when I took a box an hour ago. I particularly like your being free to go—if you are free."
She began almost to rave with pleasure. "Dear Peter, how good you are! They'll have it at any hour. Florence will be so glad."