“Well, it won’t be the fault of my friends if I don’t!” she returned ruefully. “Marraine expended a heap of eloquence over my misdeeds this afternoon.”
“Lady Arabella? I’m glad to hear it. Though she has about as much chance of producing any permanent result as the gentleman who occupied his leisure time in rolling a stone uphill.”
“Cat!” Magda made a small grimace at her. “Ah, here’s some tea!” Melrose, known among Magda’s friends as “the perfect butler,” had come noiselessly into the room and was arranging the tea paraphernalia with the reverential precision of one making preparation for some mystic rite. “Perhaps when you’ve had a cup you’ll feel more amiable—that is, if I give you lots of sugar.”
“What was the text of Lady Arabella’s homily?” inquired Gillian presently, as she sipped her tea.
“Oh, that boy, Kit Raynham,” replied Magda impatiently. “It appears I’m blighting his young prospects—his professional ones, I mean. Though I don’t quite see why an attack of calf-love for me should wreck his work as an architect!”
“I do—if he spends his time sketching ‘the Wielitzska’ in half a dozen different poses instead of making plans for a garden city.”
Magda smiled involuntarily.
“Does he do that?” she said. “But how ridiculous of him!”
“It’s merely indicative of his state of mind,” returned Gillian. She gazed meditatively into the fire. “You know, Magda, I think it will mean the end of our friendship when Coppertop reaches years of discretion.”
Coppertop was Gillian’s small son, a young person of seven, who owed his cognomen to the crop of flaming red curls which adorned his round button of a head.