"Too long," said Roger. "Too long by about three years."
That afternoon he sent me a great box of flowers. My conscience was troubling me rather, so I sent them down to the dinner table. Whatever happened I was not going to lie about them.
But Bill only frowned.
"I've just paid a florist's bill of two hundred dollars," he grumbled. "Cut out the American beauties, old dear."
It was not his tone that made me angry. It was his calm assumption that I had bought the things. As if no one would think of sending me flowers!
"If you would stop sending orchids to silly débutantes when they come out," I snapped, "there would be no such florist's bills."
One way or another Bill got on my nerves that week. He brought Wallie Smith home one night to dinner, and Wallie got on my nerves too. I could remember, when Wallie and Carrie were engaged and we were just married, how he used to come and talk us black in the face about Carrie.
"How's Carrie, Wallie?" I said during the soup.
"She's all right," he replied, and changed the subject. But later in the evening, while Bill was walking on the lawn with a cigar, he broke out for fair.
"Carrie's on a milk diet," he said apropos of nothing. "If she stays on it another week I'm going to Colorado. She's positively brutal, and she hasn't ordered a real dinner for anybody for a week."