“How do you do, Mr. Munroe. How clever of you to be dressed in time!” said the Doña. There was always a note of irony in her voice, and it was confirmed by the myopic contraction of her eyes; so David imagined, quite erroneously, that she was “having a dig” at his tails and white waistcoat. Nor did Dick improve matters by saying, “I say, Munroe, you put us all to shame.”
Then Rory came in, so easily, chattering and laughing as if he had known them all his life—also in a dinner-jacket and a black tie; because, if poor David had only known, Arnold had told him it was “just a family party and he needn’t bother about tails.”
The moment Rory had entered the room, Teresa had felt a sudden little contraction of her throat, and had almost exclaimed aloud, “At last!”
In their childhood, she and Pepa had dreamed of, and craved for, a man doll, made of some supple material which would allow of its limbs being bent according to their will, its face modelled and painted with a realism unknown to the toy shops, a little fair moustache of real hair that could be twisted, and real clothes that, of course, came off and on: waistcoat, tie, collar, braces, and in a pocket a little gold watch.
Their longing for this object had, at one time, become an obsession, and had reached the point of their regarding living men entirely from the point of view of whether, shrunk to twelve inches high, they would make a good doll.
So Teresa, who had so often deplored the childishness of her friends and family, actually found herself gazing with gloating eyes at Rory Dundas—the perfect man doll, found at last.
Then they went into dinner. Guy took in Teresa; he was nervous, and more talkative than usual, and she was unusually distraite.
The room grew hot; every one seemed to be talking at once—screaming about the Fifth Form at St. Dominics, or Black Beauty, or both. It seemed that Arnold, when he was at Rugby, had exchanged one or both with Concha for a Shakespeare, illustrated by photographs of leading actors and actresses, and that he wanted them back.
“Ah! he is thinking of his own children. Does it mean ... can he be going to ...?” thought the Doña, delighted at the thought of the children, frightened at the thought of the wife.
“You must certainly give them back to Arnold, Concha; they’re his,” she said firmly.