"Let me call your mother," he said. "She'll know you are all right when I'm here."
Well, I had to listen. The idea of her saying I'd tried to get him back, when everybody knows how he carried on when I turned him down! I hadn't given him a thought for years.
"Did you make love to Clara?"
"Certainly not. Look here, Maisie, you can afford to be magnanimous. Clara's a nice woman, but she's years older than you are. You know who loves you, don't you?"
Positively he was appealing. He sounded fairly sick.
"Get mother on the wire," said Maisie curtly. "Then call me. I'll talk to her."
Roger opened the door as soon as she had gone and squeezed in beside me.
"She's coming to telephone. You'll have to go somewhere else, Clara," he said.
"Where, for instance?"
"I may be able to collect them in the pantry. Then you can run across and get out the door."