"Sorry to have given you the hump," he said, with his boyish smile. "Next week I will take you to The Mikado. No tears there! You will laugh till you cry. Rather a bull that—what?"
He persevered manfully in this strain in his endeavour to drive away impressionable Daphne's distress on Jack Point's behalf, and ultimately succeeded.
"I hope he was dead, not simply in a faint," was her final reference to the subject. Then she continued: "I shall take them all to see that lovely piece—separately. I am not sure about Nicky, though. She is just at the scoffing age just now, and I don't think I could bear it, if she——"
"Not long ago," said Carthew, "I took a girl—that sort of girl—to see The Yeomen."
Daphne regarded him covertly. She knew the girl.
"Well?" she said.
"I took her on purpose," continued Carthew—"to see how she——"
Daphne, deeply interested, nodded comprehendingly.
"I know," she said. "How did she take it?"
"She never stirred," said Carthew, "all through the last act. When the curtain fell, she sat on for a few moments without saying a word, and she never spoke all the time I was taking her home. When I said good-night to her, she—she said something to me. It was not much, but it showed me that she was the right sort after all, in spite of what people said——"