Dinner that night was an unusually cheerful meal, and by the time Tony carried in his work to the drawing-room that he might correct it beside Lallie, it was nearly nine o'clock.
Everything was arranged for his comfort when he did appear. A table at his elbow to hold his papers, his chair at the exact angle where he would get the best light, and Lallie standing on the hearth-rug with a box of matches in her hand ready to light his pipe.
"Oh, I say, Lallie!" said Tony, yielding weakly to temptation. "D'you think I may? No one has ever smoked in this room. I don't know what Miss Foster would say."
"A pipe, Tony! Surely a little pipe will do no harm? Why, the window's wide open and there's a fire; and there are very few hangings and precious little furniture. Never did I see such a bare, stiff room. I had to have a little bit of fire to help furnish it. There's one good thing, it will be a capital room for sound, and a grand piano will fill it up a bit. Now sit down, and I won't speak another word till you speak to me."
Lallie pushed him down in his chair and fetched a stool on which she seated herself, leaning her back against Tony's knees, on her own she laid an open book, and in her hands was a piece of knitting.
For a few minutes there was absolute silence. Tony Bevan tried to absorb himself in the Latin prose of Lower VIth classical, but he was acutely conscious of the soft weight that leant against him, and he found his eyes wandering from the sheets he held to the top of Lallie's head just underneath, and thence to her ever busy hands, which held a pale blue silk tie--a tie that was growing in length with the utmost rapidity, for Lallie knitted at express speed, only pausing every now and then to turn a page of her book.
Tony felt the strongest desire to talk, and was quite unreasonably irritated at his guest's complete absorption, which gave him neither lead nor excuse.
The wood fire crackled cheerfully--Lallie had begged some logs from Ford--and Lallie's harp in the corner caught the ruddy gleams on strings and gilded frame.
Tony looked round the large, handsome room with a new interest. Hitherto he had not considered it as any concern of his. It was Miss Foster's domain, to be entered by him only on such occasions as she gave tea to visiting parents. To be sure he had bought all the furniture for it, and each piece, in itself, was good and possessed of qualities that redeemed it from the commonplace. There was one really beautiful Hepplewhite cabinet, a genuine Sheraton desk and bookcase, and some fine old china; but Lallie was right, the room was stiff, bare, wholly lacking in charm. Not to-night; it seemed neither bare nor stiff to-night. It was full of an atmosphere subtler and sweeter even than that produced by the comfortable clouds of tobacco smoke that floated between Tony Bevan and the girl leaning against his knees. To-night the room radiated a delicious atmosphere of home, and all because a slip of a girl had disarranged the furniture and sat there at his feet looking the very spirit of the domestic hearth.
In grumpy moments, Tony was apt to declare that in all his big house no corner seemed really to belong to him except the writing-table in his study. Among the many admirable qualities of Miss Foster, she did not possess the power of making a man feel comfortable and at his ease in her society. As a rule he was ready enough to admit that this was, perhaps, an additional reason why she filled her post so efficiently. The greatest gossip in Hamchester could not conjecture any matrimonial complication with Miss Foster, and Tony rejoiced in the serene security engendered by this knowledge. Nevertheless, to-night he was conscious of very distinct enjoyment of, and interest in, his own drawing-room.