“Well, I’m awfully proud to have met you, Miss Caspar. And I hope you’ll bring some of your friends along to the Albany, B4. My number on the telephone is 059 Mayfair, and I’ll lay in a stock of cake.”
“Delighted!—and you must come and see us, me and my old granny—Mrs. Cathcart—used to play Lady Macbeth to John Peter Kendall and those old swells, although I daresay you can hardly remember them. But she’s a dear, Mr. Shelmerdine; and if you want to hear about the dignity of the profession, and how her granddaughter’s lowered it, come round to Bedford Gardens, Number Ten, any Sunday afternoon, and you’ll say she is the dearest old thing about.”
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH WE MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF
THE GODDAUGHTER OF EDWARD BEAN
Mr. Philip counted the hours till Sunday came. He was sorely infected now by the deadly virus.
As for those three goals against Scotland, he had clean forgotten them. They were never mentioned in his own little world. In Grosvenor Square, in particular, no store was set by such irresponsible undergraduate behavior. There his career only dated from the time he had managed to get his commission rather easily in the Second, and he had never been quite forgiven for tiring of a respectable course of life so soon.
It was strange that this sportswoman, so full of sense and pluck, had seen him in the crowded and glorious hour when life was his in its fullness. He had lived in those days, perhaps a little crudely, but now he wanted to have done with his idleness and start to live again.
He was in love with Mary Caspar, and that was all about it! Whether she drank tea at the Carlton or warbled ditties on the boards of Drury, she rang tune in every note. No wonder that she was the uncrowned queen of many a provincial city; no wonder that every errand boy in the metropolis whistled “Nelson” and “Arcadee.”
On his way to his rooms he called at a news-agent’s, and invested a shilling in picture-postcards of Mary Caspar.
“I suppose you sell a lot of these?”
“Hundreds,” said the young man behind the counter. “We’ve sold out three times in a fortnight, and the demand is increasing.”