“No, indeed,” said Robinette, “I was only longing to test Carnaby’s generosity and educate him in buying trifles for pretty ladies.”
“He can probably be relied on to educate himself in that line when the time comes,” Mrs. de Tracy remarked; “and now if you have all finished talking about hair, I will take up my breakfast again.”
“Oh, Aunt de Tracy, I am so sorry if it wasn’t a nice subject, but I never thought. Anyway I only talked about hairpins; it was Mr. Lavendar who introduced hair into the conversation; wasn’t it, Middy dear?”
Lavendar thought he could have annihilated them both for their open comradeship, their obvious delight in each other’s society. Was he to be put on the shelf like a dry old 132 bachelor? Not he! He would circumvent them in some way or another, although the rôle of gooseberry was new to him.
The two young people set off in high spirits, and Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon watched them as they walked down the avenue on their way to the station, their clasped hands swinging in a merry rhythm as they hummed a bit of the last popular song.
“I hope Robinetta will not Americanize Carnaby,” said Mrs. de Tracy. “He seems so foolishly elated, so feverishly gay all at once. Her manner is too informal; Carnaby requires constant repression.”
“Perhaps his temperature has not returned to normal since his attack of quinsy,” Miss Smeardon observed, reassuringly.
Meanwhile Lavendar sat in Admiral de Tracy’s old smoking room for half an hour writing letters. Every time that he glanced up from his work, and he did so pretty often, his eyes fell on a picture that hung upon the opposite wall. It was the copy of 133 Sir Joshua’s “Robinetta” made long ago and just presented to its namesake.
In the portrait the girl’s hair was a still brighter gold; yet certainly there was a likeness somewhere about it, he thought; partly in the expression, partly in the broad low forehead, and the eyes that looked as if they were seeing fairies.
Of course to his mind Mrs. Loring was a hundred times more lovely than Sir Joshua’s famous girl with a robin. He felt very ill-used because Robinette and Carnaby had deliberately gone for an excursion without him and had left him toiling over business papers when they had gone off to enjoy themselves.