"Better teach her baccarat and have done with it."
"Well, she needn't faint when it's mentioned. This is 1920. If ever those Beverley girls marry it will be one another."
"If she begins to think of marrying in another four or five years——"
"She's not going to sit on the arm of your chair for five years while you read the Paris Daily Mail.... Anyway, about to-night's party——"
Then, on the way to the Stade or the Club, I should have Alec's view of the matter.
"When we were kids, if we were allowed to stop up once a year for a pantomime ... beastly mixed sort of place like this too! Madge doesn't know half that goes on. Why, before I'd been here three days one of the waiters at the Grand had the infernal neck to come up to me and whisper——"
I broke into uncontrollable laughter. The idea of a waiter whispering alluring suggestions to Alec Aird of all people was altogether too much for me.
"And what did you say?" I asked him.
"Say?" said Alec grimly. "When I said 'Frog' he jumped, I promise you that!... And mark you, these French fellows look after their own women all right—got their hands on their elbows all the time. It's only our confounded ideas of freedom——"
"But there's no harm in to-night's party——"