"Bring her over to dinner to-morrow—no, not to-morrow, I'm booked. Say Thursday, and I'll have a nice man to meet her. She needs someone to play around with. There's nothing like another man to knock the first one out of a woman's head. It's cure by homeopathy."
Penelope smiled dubiously.
"It's a bit of bad luck on the second man, isn't it—if he's nice? You know, Nan is rather fatal to the peace of the male mind."
"Oh, the man I'm thinking of has himself well in hand. He's a novelist—and finds safety in numbers. His mother was French."
"And Nan's great-grandmother. Kitty, is it wise?"
"Extreme measures are sometimes necessary. He and she will hit it off together at once, I know."
As Kitty finished speaking there came a trill at the front-door bell, followed a minute later by a masculine knock on the door.
"Come in," cried Penelope.
The door opened to admit a tall, fair man who somehow reminded one of a big, genial Newfoundland.
"I've called for my wife," he said, shaking hands with. Penelope, and smiling down at her with a pair of lazily humorous blue eyes. "Can I have her?"