She reached her hand across the table and laid it on his as she had a habit of doing of late, and looked serenely into his eyes.
“Barry,” she said, “you dear old f—fellow! If I thought there was the slightest danger of your getting jealous over that story, I’d make Jane Chichester eat her words. As it is, ‘the least said the soonest mended.’ Oh, here’s Steve now.”
Lifting her eyes at the sound of footsteps in the hall she had discovered Lamar in the doorway, and had hastily withdrawn her hand.
“Come in, Steve,” she called out to him. “Barry’s here. We were just talking about you.”
“And I’ve just been talking about you,” replied Steve as he entered the room, giving scant notice to Barry, and seated himself at the end or the table.
“What about me?” she inquired.
“I’ve just heard,” he replied, “about the affair up at Tracy’s the other night, and about the way that bully-ragging lawyer heckled you. I was going right up there to take it out of his hide, but I thought I’d better come in first and get the thing straight.”
“That’s right, Steve. That’s what Barry did. Didn’t you, Barry?”
“Yes,” responded Barry. “I was going up there myself to have a reckoning with Phil; but Mary says, ‘Don’t go.’”