“How long is it since you have seen Cynthia, Mr. Fayre?”
Lady Staveley’s fine eyes were alight with amusement as she turned them on her guest. He had just alluded to Lady Cynthia Bell as “a demure little thing” and was now discussing his tea-cake with the serenity of one quite unaware that he has been guilty of an incredible misstatement.
Allen Fayre, better known to his friends as “Hatter,” a nickname he had somehow managed to collect in his unregenerate Oxford days, paused for reflection.
“Quite twelve years, I should think. She was a leggy little thing of about eight when I last set eyes on her.”
Lady Staveley gave a soft gurgle of amusement.
“She’s leggy still! All these modern girls are, you know, but I’m afraid you’ll find that the demureness has evaporated. She’s decidedly what the children’s old nurse used to call ‘a cure’ now.”
Hatter Fayre caught the mirth in her voice and responded to it. When he smiled it was easy to see how he had come by the network of fine wrinkles at the corners of his keen grey eyes and why the old Oxford nickname had persisted through all the long years of his exile in India, for a nickname, unless it is an unkind one, rarely sticks to a man who is not beloved of his friends.
“I do seem to be a bit of a back number!” he admitted ruefully. “Girls occasionally were demure, you know, in my day.”
“I’m fond of Cynthia,” went on his hostess thoughtfully. “But she sometimes makes me rejoice that my peck of troubles are all sons.”
Fayre turned to his other neighbour.