Elaine had scarcely listened to this. She was bent like a child on making friends. She said to Joe: “Mr. Pell is a writer, you remember.”
“Ah,” said Joe. “I had forgotten. . . . What is your line, Pell?”
“Fiction,” said Wilfred. It struck him that there was something deliciously appropriate in the word. It was his little private joke. No other eye betrayed any consciousness of it.
“I control several fiction magazines,” said Joe, with his deprecatory air. “You must submit your stories to my editors.”
Frances Mary was on the verge of an ironic speech here, but Wilfred managed to divert it with a warning touch of his foot under the table. “Thanks, I will,” he said pleasantly to Joe.
“What are the children’s names?” Elaine asked of Frances Mary.
“Mary, Constance, and Stephen.”
“I like those names. Mary, I suppose, is . . .”
“Six.”
“The same age as my Sturges. . . . I wish you’d come to see me some day, Mrs. Pell. And bring Mary. I mean it. Shall I write and set a day?”