"My dear 'Tubby,'" she cried; "what age do you think you're living in?"
"Well, I don't know," he said, looking at her doubtfully.
"If that isn't too absurd!" she cried. "Has there been a war or has there not? And have I been in France doing every kind of dirty work or not? Really, 'Tubby,' you might be Mother."
His chubby face coloured. His eyes were full of perplexity.
"Oh, of course, if you want to go, I'll take you," he said. "All the same, I'd rather not."
She insisted. The tickets were taken. She was determined that that night he should propose to her.
The great evening had arrived, and they had a little dinner at the Carlton Grill. Lois was wearing a dress of the very latest fashion—that is, a dress that showed all her back, that was cut very low in front, and that left her arms and shoulders quite bare. She seemed, as she sat at the table, to have almost nothing on at all. This, unfortunately, did not suit her. Her figure was magnificent, but the rough life in France had helped neither her skin nor her complexion. The upper part of her chest and her neck were sunburnt. Her arms were brown. She had taken much trouble with her hair, but it would not obey her now as it had done in the old days.
"I'm a fright," she had thought as she looked at herself in the glass. For a moment she thought she would wear one of her old less-revealing evening frocks. But no; she was worrying absurdly. All the women wore these dresses now. She would look a frump in that old dress. In colour the frock was a bright mauve. She was aware that all eyes followed her as she came into the grill room. She carried herself superbly, remembering how many girls—yes, and men too—had called her a queen. She saw at once that "Tubby" Grenfell was uneasy, and not his cheerful, innocent self. He seemed to have something that dragged his thoughts away from her. They both drank a good deal; soon they were laughing uproariously....
They started off in a taxi for Olympia. The wine that she had drunk, the sense of the crisis that this night must bring to her, the beautiful air of this May evening, through which in their open taxi they were gliding, the whisper and the murmur of the Knightsbridge crowd—all these things excited her as she had never in all her life been excited before. Had she looked at herself she would have realised, from this excitement, the child that she really was.
She put her hand on "Tubby's" broad knee and drew a little closer to him. He talked to her eagerly, himself excited by the great event. He explained something of the fighting to her.