She laughed amusedly.
“Oh, Glyn dear”—she never made use of the conventional address of “father.” Glyn Peterson would have disliked it intensely if she had—“Oh, Glyn dear, I haven’t been your daughter for the last twenty years without learning to divine when you are cudgelling your brains as to the prettiest method of introducing a disagreeable topic.”
Peterson grinned a little. He tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire and lit a fresh one before replying.
“On this occasion,” he observed at last, slowly, “the topic is not necessarily a disagreeable one. Jean”—his quizzical glance raked her face suddenly—“how would you like to go to England?”
“To England?”
Her tone held the same incredulous excitement that anyone unexpectedly invited to week-end at El Dorado might be expected to evince.
“England! Glyn, do you really mean to take me there at last?”
“You’d like to go then?” A keen observer might have noticed a shade of relief pass over Peterson’s face.
“Like it? It’s the one thing above all others that I’ve longed for. It seems so ridiculous to be an Englishwoman and yet never once to have set foot in England.”
The man’s eyes clouded.