In the middle of July Iris was to celebrate the eighteenth anniversary of her birth; and rather to Anstice's dismay he found that the event was to be marked by a large and festive merry-making—nothing less, in fact, than a dinner-party, followed by a dance to be held in the rarely-used ballroom for which Greengates had been once famous.
"You'll come, of course, Dr. Anstice?" Iris asked the question one sunny afternoon as she prepared an iced drink for her visitor, after a strenuous game of tennis. "You do dance, don't you? For my part I could dance for ever."
"I do dance, yes," he said, taking the tumbler she held out to him, with a word of thanks. "But I don't think a ball is exactly in my line nowadays."
"It's not a ball," she said gaily. "Aunt Laura doesn't approve of oven a dance, seeing I'm not really 'out' till I've been presented next year—but Dad has been a perfect dear and says we can dance as long as we like down here where none of our London relations can see us!"
"Well, dance or ball, I suppose it will be a large affair?" He smiled at her, and she told herself that he grew younger every day.
"About a hundred and fifty, I suppose," she said lightly. "The room holds two hundred, but a crowded room is hateful—though an empty one would be almost worse. Anyhow, you are invited, first of all. Dinner is at seven, because we want to start dancing at nine. Will you come?"
Just for a second he hesitated. Then:
"Of course I'll come," he said recklessly. "But you must promise me at least three dances, or I shall plead an urgent telephone call and fly in the middle!"
"Three!" Her grey eyes laughed into his. "That's rather greedy! Well—I'll give you two, and—perhaps—an extra."
"That's a promise," he said, and taking out a small notebook he made an entry therein. "And now, in view of coming frivolities, I must go and continue my day's work."