She did speak to Archie, and he listened attentively. But at the close of her oration, when his silence was encouraging her to hope that she had made some impression, he entirely discomposed her by inquiring calmly if there were to be any more guild meetings at the vicarage before she went to town, as if so, he would make a point of looking in as he had done the week before.
“How can you, Archie?” said Hebe. “The very thing I have been trying. No,” she broke off, “there are to be no more meetings, and if there were, I would not let you know.”
“All right,” said Archie; “it doesn’t matter in the least. I’ve little birds in my service who are much more reliable sources of information than your wise ladyship. And one of them has informed me that there is going to be a tea-fight in the garden at Pinnerton Lodge for the damsels who have the honour to belong to the guild. And I mean to be at it.”
“Archie?” exclaimed Hebe, stopping short, and looking at him in a sort of despair. “You go too far sometimes in your love of fun and amusing yourself; you do, really. The Derwents are not people to take freedoms with. Just because Blanche—Miss Derwent, I mean—is so charming and lovely, and unlike the common run of girls, you’re much mistaken if you think that you can treat her with less deference than if she—”
“If she what?” said Archie.
“Than if she—well—belonged to our set, you know. Was quite in everything.”
“How do you know that I’ve not fallen desperately, in love with her?” he inquired coolly, looking Hebe full in the face.
“For two reasons,” she replied. “You don’t know what really falling in love means; and secondly, if such a thing had happened, you wouldn’t talk about it like that.”
Archie laughed.
“All the same,” he said, “I am going to be at the Pinnerton Lodge tea-fight. See if I’m not.”