Mrs. Wells had taken the mind-reading as a matter of course.
“Exactly.” Richard was quite ready with an explanation. “You see, my peculiar name struck Jerry—struck Miss Wells as absurd; which of course it is. She said she could not call me Mr. Richard, as if she were talking about me to one of the maids—‘Mr. Richard will have his tea now; Mr. Richard does not go out to-day’—and all that sort of thing. She said, and wisely, that Mr. Richard was not, strictly speaking, a name at all; so she said——”
This story was not going as well as it should. In the flash of planning it had seemed a first-rate explanation.
“What was it you said?” he appealed to Geraldine.
She counted her five before looking up from the sewing.
“You seem to be doing very well,” she commented quietly. “Go on. I’m quite sure I don’t remember what I said.”
“You said something, I’m sure,” Richard cocked his head sideways and tried to think of something she might have said.
Mrs. Wells was thinking, too. “If Geraldine made up her mind to call you by your first name she would not be a daughter of mine if she hesitated. I agree with her; Mr. Richard is uncomfortable; I think I shall drop the ‘Mr.’ too.”
“By all means, do!”
Richard was glad to get out of the difficulty due to the failure of invention.