"They are far more appreciative than the occasion warrants," I answered. "But to return to this supper question: how will this day week suit you?"
"It will suit me," Thorndyke answered, with a glance at his junior.
"And me too," said the latter; "so, if it will do for the Bellinghams, we will consider it settled; but if they can't come you must fix another night."
"Very well," I said, rising and knocking out my pipe, "I will issue the invitation to-morrow. And now I must be off to have another slog at those notes."
As I walked homewards I speculated cheerfully on the prospect of entertaining my friends under my own (or rather Barnard's) roof, if they could be lured out of their eremitical retirement. The idea had, in fact, occurred to me already, but I had been deterred by the peculiarities of Barnard's housekeeper. For Mrs. Gummer was one of those housewives who make up for an archaic simplicity of production by preparations on the most portentous and alarming scale. But this time I would not be deterred. If only the guests could be enticed into my humble lair, it would be easy to furnish the raw materials of the feast from outside; and the consideration of ways and means occupied me pleasantly until I found myself once more at my writing-table, confronted by my voluminous notes on the incident of the North Syrian War.
CHAPTER VIII
A MUSEUM IDYLL
Whether it was that practice revived a forgotten skill on my part, or that Miss Bellingham had over-estimated the amount of work to be done, I am unable to say. But whichever may have been the explanation, the fact is that the fourth afternoon saw our task so nearly completed that I was fain to plead that a small remainder might be left over to form an excuse for yet one more visit to the reading-room.
Short, however, as had been the period of our collaboration, it had been long enough to produce a great change in our relations to one another. For there is no friendship so intimate and satisfying as that engendered by community of work, and none—between man and woman, at any rate—so frank and wholesome.