“Your gentleman friend showed up all right, then?”
“Oh, yes. He didn't telephone because he was on a job out of town.”
Here perhaps David would lower his voice, for Lucy was never far away.
“Did you wear the flowers?”
“Yes, violets. I put one away to remember you by. It was funny at first. I wouldn't tell him who gave them to me.”
David would chuckle delightedly.
“That's right,” he would say. “Keep him guessing, the young rascal. We men are kittle cattle, Nellie, kittle cattle!”
Even the valet unbent to him, and inquired if the doctor needed a man at home to look after him and his clothes. David was enormously tickled.
“Well,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “I'll tell you how I manage now, and then you'll see. When I want my trousers pressed I send them downstairs and then I wait in my bathrobe until they come back. I'm a trifle better off for boots, but you'd have to knock Mike, my hired man, unconscious before he'd let you touch them.”
The valet grinned understandingly.