“I don’t know if you are aware, Mr Hammond, that at least your language is peculiar. I am afraid that Norah must have been forgetting herself to be the cause of this—singular scene.”
“Forgetting herself? Not at all! It’s we who have been remembering her—that’s how it is, Mrs O’Brady. And, between ourselves, I’d be glad if you’d tell her that you’d like her to occupy a stall I have to-night at the Gaiety Theatre.”
“Excuse me, Mrs O’Brady,” interposed Basil Carter, “but Mr Hammond seems disposed to take an unfair advantage of you. It is I who would ask you to permit Miss Norah to share my box.”
“Mrs O’Brady,” exclaimed Jack Purchase, “before you say one word to either of them, please allow me to inform you that it was I who first asked Miss Norah to honour me.”
“And how about my dinner at the King’s!” cried Major Tibbet. “I need hardly tell you, Mrs O’Brady, that I have the good fortune to be somewhat the senior of these young gentlemen, and it is therefore with every confidence that I ask you this evening to entrust Miss Norah to me.”
Mamma’s manner, as she replied, was anything but genial.
“Whether consciously or not I cannot say, but you gentlemen are behaving with more than a little singularity. You seem oblivious of the fact that other ladies are present besides this—child. Must I again request you, Norah, to oblige me by at once retiring to your own room?”
Suddenly a voice came from the door, and Mr Rumford advanced at a pace which was hardly becoming to his decidedly well-developed figure—in his hand the ubiquitous box. He and Lilian had entered together, and only a second before, unless I was much mistaken, I had seen him offering it to her. Now he withdrew it, with what was very like a snatch, from her approaching fingers.
“Retire to her own room!” he protested, in that loud, ringing voice of his, which always made me think what an excellent cheap-jack he would have made. “You couldn’t be so cruel, Mrs O’Brady. It’s not to be thought of, not for a moment. May I ask you to accept these bonbons, dear Miss Norah? I am sure you have a sweet tooth—it would be so in character. And I am so fortunate as to have two stalls to-night for the Gaiety Theatre. If you would avail yourself of one——”
He was interrupted by Audrey breaking into an apparently irresistible peal of laughter. Everyone turned to stare at her. That sort of thing is so unusual in Audrey, who is generally the quietest of persons. I, for one, had never heard her laugh like that before. She endeavoured to explain what had caused her merriment.