"Patience, patience then—you've always me!" said Nick; to which he subjoined: "If it's a question of going to the play I scarcely see why you shouldn't dine at my mother's all the same. People go to the play after dinner."
"Yes, but it wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be decent: it's a case when I must be in my seat from the rise of the curtain." Peter, about this, was thoroughly lucid. "I should force your mother to dine an hour earlier than usual and then in return for her courtesy should go off to my entertainment at eight o'clock, leaving her and Grace and Biddy languishing there. I wish I had proposed in time that they should go with me," he continued not very ingenuously.
"You might do that still," Nick suggested.
"Oh at this time of day it would be impossible to get a box."
"I'll speak to Miss Rooth about it if you like when she comes," smiled Nick.
"No, it wouldn't do," said Peter, turning away and looking once more at his watch. He made tacitly the addition that still less than asking Lady Agnes for his convenience to dine early would this be decent, would it be thinkable. His taking Biddy the night he dined with her and with Miss Tressilian had been something very like a violation of those proprieties. He couldn't say that, however, to the girl's brother, who remarked in a moment that it was all right, since Peter's action left him his own freedom.
"Your own freedom?"—and Peter's question made him turn.
"Why you see now I can go to the theatre myself."
"Certainly; I hadn't thought of that. You'd naturally have been going."