“I’m just ready,” she said.
“Wait a minute,” he answered her. “Before we go in to the girls there’s something, several things, that I want to say.”
His great clumsy body moved across the floor, and he sat down hastily in a chair by the dressing-table.
She watched him anxiously with her sharp little eyes. “Yes,” she said, “only hurry up. I’m hungry.”
“Well, there are two things really,” he answered slowly. “Things you’ve got to know.”
She noticed one point, that he didn’t apologise in advance as he would have done three weeks ago. There were no apologies now, only a stolid determination to get through with it.
“First, it’s about young Tony Gale. I’ve just been telling his family. He married a girl yesterday and ran off to Paris with her. You can bet the family are pleased.”
Mrs. Maradick was excited. “Not really! Really eloped? That Gale boy! How splendid! A real elopement! Of course one could see that something was up. His being out so much, and so on; I knew. But just fancy! Really doing it! Won’t old Sir Richard——!”
Her eyes were sparkling. The romance of it had obviously touched her, it was very nearly as though one had eloped oneself, knowing the boy and everything!
Then he added, “I had to tell them. You see, I’ve known about it all the time, been in it, so to speak. Helped them to arrange it and so on, and Sir Richard had a word or two to say to me just now about it.”