Jawn was not disturbed, although the evident intention was to clip his budding limerick. When she had quite finished he nodded his head and gave her a limerick with a sufficiency of proper rhymes for “Naples.”
Jerry was not pressed for explanation of her statement concerning the habits of Richard before she had met him. Jawn’s limericks drew attention away from her, and as the luncheon progressed Phœbe noted the far-off approach of the cat-boat with its yacht in tow. From the dining-room the Lake was in full view. And Jerry remembered her telephone communication with Fagner, and explained the purpose of the new yacht. But before luncheon was over Jerry managed to get Jawn to herself.
“Why do you confuse us by taking a strange name?” she asked. “You are really Professor John Galloway, aren’t you?”
“It’s all the style!” he told her. “Your Mr. Richard took a fancy name and he gave me the idea. What’s wrong with John De Lancey? I’m enjoying it. Already I feel like an aristocrat. Your Richard writes me that the new name has made a complete change in his personality. As a psychologist that interests me, so I’m trying it out. I hope to get a new personality, too; you don’t know how tired I am of the old one.”
She had spent the morning upstairs in a fruitless endeavour to get some sense out of the tangle of domestic accounts. There were some worrisome entries in the books, and naturally she was not in the spirit to comprehend Jawn’s humour to the full.
“I fear it will do harm if mother discovers we are all hoaxing her,” she told him.
“She’ll enjoy it,” he insisted. The mother was laughing immoderately at some witticism from Phœbe Norris. “Trust me to clear everything up when the time comes. I’ll study out some special limericks for the occasion. Anyone can see that she is a born lover of limericks. But tell me, how did Mr. Richard become Mr. Richard?”
She explained the beginnings of the incognito and let him understand that she was sorry the innocent lark had developed so far.
“Of course you know who he really is,” he said.
“No.”