“I know. Isn’t it awful! I got your address from Elsa Wentworth two or three days ago, and then Clarkie told me that Cynthia was over here on a visit with her husband, so I thought how jolly it would be to have a regular reunion. We three were such friends in the old days. . . . You remember Clarkie, of course? Miss Clarkson, who used to be English mistress at Wayland House.”
“Yes, of course. Where did you run into her?”
“Oh, I see a lot of her. She runs a Domestic Employment Agency in Shaftesbury Avenue now, and I have to go there about once a fortnight to get a new maid. She supplied Jane.”
“Is Cynthia’s husband coming with her this afternoon?”
“No. I wanted it to be simply us four. Do you know him? But of course you don’t. This is his first visit to England.”
“I know his poetry. He’s quite a celebrity. Cynthia’s lucky.”
They had made their way into the drawing-room, a gruesome little apartment full of all those antimacassars, wax flowers, and china dogs inseparable from the cheaper type of London furnished house. Eve, though the exterior of Number Eighteen should have prepared her for all this, was unable to check a slight shudder as she caught the eye of the least prepossessing of the dogs, goggling at her from the mantelpiece.
“Don’t look at them,” recommended Phyllis, following her gaze. “I try not to. We’ve only just moved in here, so I haven’t had time to make the place nice. Here’s tea. All right, Jane, put it down there. Tea, Eve?”
Eve sat down. She was puzzled and curious. She threw her mind back to the days at school and remembered the Phyllis of that epoch as almost indecently opulent. A millionaire stepfather there had been then, she recollected. What had become of him now, that he should allow Phyllis to stay in surroundings like this? Eve scented a mystery, and in her customary straightforward way went to the heart of it.
“Tell me all about yourself,” she said, having achieved as much comfort as the peculiar structure of her chair would permit. “And remember that I haven’t seen you for two years, so don’t leave anything out.”