"Of course. You'd be curious if you found me selling flowers in Piccadilly. You'd come up and say: 'allo! Francey, what have you been doing with yourself?' And you'd have tried to give me a leg up, if it only ran to buying a gardenia for old times' sake."
He suspected her of poking fun at him. And yet there was that subtle underlying seriousness about her and a frank, disarming kindliness.
"You think I'm down on my luck," he retorted, "and so anybody has a right to butt in."
"Not a right. Of course, if I'd met you in Bond Street, all sleek and polished, I shouldn't have dreamed of butting in. I should have said to myself, 'Well, that's the end of the little Robert Stonehouse saga as far as I'm concerned,' and I don't suppose I should ever have thought of you again. But now I shall have to go on thinking—and wondering what happened—and worrying." She drew her cloak closer about her like a bird folding its wings, and added prosaically: "I say, don't you find it rather cold standing about here?"
He turned with her and walked on sullenly, his head down to the wind. He thought: "I shall tell her nothing at all." But to his astonishment she was silent, and finally he had to speak himself.
"I'm afraid this silly business has broken up your party. Or was it getting too lively for you? Howard's beanos used to have a considerable reputation."
"He often seems drunk when he isn't," she returned tranquilly. "I think it's because he enjoys things more than most people are able to. It wasn't that. I wanted to see you so much, and I knew Brown's would be closing about now. So I sent them to a theatre. It seemed the safest place."
"And they went like lambs. But, then, the Banditti always did."
"Oh, the Banditti!" He guessed that she was smiling to herself. "The Banditti wouldn't have grown up like that. They were much too nice—never quite really wicked, were they? Just carried off their feet. Still, they were never quite the same after you left. I think they always hankered a little after the good old days when they rang door-hells and chivied their governesses. Probably they will never be so happy again."
"They had you. It was you they really cared about. Everybody did what you liked."