“Where indeed!”
The speculation as to Bonnybell’s hypothetical whereabouts silenced both ejaculators for a moment or two, until a glance at the clock telling Mrs. Glanville that her typewriter would be back from luncheon in ten minutes, and that she herself would have to return to multifarious work in her business room after the same time limit, hurried her into new final tendernesses.
“You know how much I should have liked to keep you permanently.”
“Oh yes, yes, of course I do.”
Possibly the extreme fervour of this reassurance was due to a something, if faintly, yet uncomfortably self-suspicious, in the tone with which the hostess made a statement in whose truth that hostess yet almost believed.
“We have not much time, alas!”—leaving a branch of the subject dimly felt to be a little ticklish with some alacrity—“and I want, before you go, to give you a tiny carte du pays; you may find it useful.”
“It will be adding an item to your long, long list of kindnesses.”
“In the first place, my sister-in-law is much older than my brother.”
The hearer, with the black hat and inky gloves of imminent departure upon head and hand, lifted a tiny face of wistful interest in this first recorded fact from the pouf at Felicity’s feet, upon which a slim body, limp with affection and regret, had thrown itself. She at once pensively commented upon it.
“If she makes up well, I dare say it does not show much.”