And just then a servant announced "Mr. France."
Well, after all, she was not sorry to see Mr. France—or Teddy, as she had called him for a good many years. He was a frequent visitor, despite the fact that Mrs. Lancaster suffered him only because everybody else seemed to like him. He was fair, tall, and lanky, and so pleasant of countenance that it would not be worth while enumerating his defective features.
Mrs. Lancaster disapproved of him for three reasons: first, he had only two hundred a year plus a pittance from the insurance company that put up, as he expressed it, with his services; second, he had been Alan Craig's close friend; third, she suspected that he saw through her affectations. That he had been openly in love with Doris since the days of pigtails and short frocks troubled her not at all: he was too hopelessly ineligible. And it had not troubled Doris for a long time—not since Alan Craig had gone away. Since then Teddy had seemed to become more of a friend and less of an admirer than ever.
"This is great luck," he remarked, seating himself in the opposite easy chair with an enforced extension of immaculate pumps and silken sox. (People often wondered how Teddy "did it" on the money.) "It's so seldom one can find you alone nowadays. Well, how's things generally?"
"Pretty much the same, Teddy," she answered, with the smile that hurt him. "Mother's busy as usual—"
"Out?"
"No; writing, I think."
"How's your father? I haven't seen him for an age."
"I wish he were fitter. He has had to stay in bed for a few days—he came down for dinner to-night for the first time. Last week he had three nights and a day in the train—with Mr. Bullard."
"Oh, I say! Bad enough without Bullard, but—"