"I—there's room for you here." She drew her skirt aside with a quick little nervous gesture.
He looked back at her surprised. She was smiling at him anxiously; there was soft deprecation in her eyes.
He hesitated.
"I—thanks," he said, and sat down.
She began chattering about Sheila Pat; about the Zoölogical Gardens, where they had been that day. She rattled on about their own Zoo in Dublin, in the Phoenix Park. She laughingly owned that the Regent's Park Zoo was larger. "But it hasn't such a beautiful background, there are no mountains, and ours is such a dear little Zoo somehow. The pelicans and peacocks and seagulls wander about in the open. Sheila Pat scorns your Regent's Park because they don't have polo matches there—"
"Oh, Mr. Lancaster," a fair-haired girl stopped before them, "I was so sorry for you! It must be terrible to be so nervous!"
He stood up.
"Very kind of you."
Her mother joined in: "Oh, no, everyone is pitying you! And Mr. Yovil is wild about it! He won't speak of it! So hard and unkind of him! As if anyone can help being nervous. Come, Lucy, dear."
Ted sat down again.