“Who wouldn’t be?” declared Smith. “She’s the sort of girl a fellow ’ud leave home for.”
“Fine feathers go a long way. There’s as good as her in the world,” came the retort, not without a favorable glance at Medenham.
“Meanwhile the tea is getting cold,” said he.
“Dear me, you needn’t hurry. Her ma is goin’ to write half-a-dozen picture postcards. But what a voice! The old girl drowns the waterfall.”
The waitress flounced off. She was pretty, and no wandering chauffeur had ever before turned aside the arrows of her bright eyes so heedlessly.
“Then you have seen Miss Vanrenen?” inquired Medenham, sipping his tea.
“Ra-ther!” said Smith. “Saw her in Paris, at the Ritz, when my people sent me over there to learn the mechanism of this car. The Count was always hanging about, and I thought he wanted the old man to buy a Du Vallon, but it’s all Lombard Street to a china orange that he was after the daughter the whole time. I don’t blame him. She’s a regular daisy. But you ought to know best. How do you get on with her?”
“Capitally.”
“Why did Dale and you swop jobs?”
“Oh, a mere matter of arrangement,” said Medenham, who realized that Smith would blurt out every item of information that he possessed if allowed to talk.