"One two—one two," Elizabeth counted. She looked up from her knitting with twinkling eyes. "Did you hate very much coming? or were you passive in the managing hands of Aunt Alice?"
He looked at her impish face blandly, then took out his cigarette case, chose a cigarette carefully, lit it, and smoked with placid enjoyment.
"Cross?" she asked, in a few minutes.
"Not in the least. Merely wondering if I might tell you the truth."
"I wouldn't," said Elizabeth. "Fiction is always stranger and more interesting. By the way, are you to be permanently at the Foreign Office now?"
"I haven't the least notion, but I shall be there for the next few months. When do you go to London?"
In the spring, she told him, probably in April, and added that her Aunt Alice had been a real fairy godmother to her.
"Very few ministers' daughters have had my chances of seeing men and cities. And some day, some day when Buff has gone to school and Father has retired and has time to look about him, we are going to India to see the boys."
"You have a very good time in London, I expect," Arthur said. "I can imagine that Aunt Alice makes a most tactful chaperon, and I hear you are very popular."
"'Here's fame!'" quoted Elizabeth flippantly. "What else did Aunt Alice tell you about me?"