"He's a male," she snapped, and ran her fingers up through her fringe, so that she appeared to stand in a gale of wind.
The first blow fell about a week after. Poppy and Vivian came home from their wedding trip. They were settled in Viv's house in Lancaster Gate, and one part of the wings was being turned into a studio for Poppy, with a glass roof. Vivian is the playwright, you know, and his study was to be beneath her work shop, with a private staircase connecting. She was most awfully happy. She'd brought home some stunning sketches, and her first work was going to be his study walls.
Basil and I were asked to dinner. Poppy wanted to talk over her plans with us, and there was no one else. Poppy was radiant. We drank to the pony at Tintagel, and to the key at Guildford, and to the new play and the new paintings. The thing was a great success until half way through the dinner, when suddenly Poppy said:
"By the way, Viv, the income tax man was here to-day."
I felt, for some reason, as I had felt when the key went down my back.
Viv smiled, and went to his doom.
"Just imagine, Basil," he said. "The sweet young person across the table made more than I did last year! Four thousand pounds!"
"I'm too commercially successful to think I have any real genius," said Poppy, complacently.
"And some small sum the same sweet young person will have to pay over to the tax man," Basil observed.
Poppy raised her violet eyes.