“The manager?” said Miss Cronin.
“What manager?” said Mrs. Clem Hodson.
“About the plum cake! Surely you remember?”
“Oh—the plum cake!” said Mrs. Hodson, looking steadily at Fanny Cronin. “Thank you very much indeed! Very good of you!”
“Thank you,” said Miss Cronin, with a sudden piteous look. “I did eat two slices. Come, Suzanne! Good-bye again, Mr. Braybrooke.”
They turned to go out. As Braybrooke watched the musquash slowly vanishing he knew in his bones that, when he did not become engaged to Miss Van Tuyn, Fanny Cronin, till the day of her death, would feel positive that he had proposed to her that afternoon and had been rejected. And he muttered in his beard:
“Damn these red-headed old women! I will not make it all right with the manager about the plum cake!”
It was a poor revenge, but the only one he could think of at the moment.
“Is anything the matter?” asked Miss Van Tuyn when he rejoined her. “Has old Fanny been tiresome?”
“Oh, no—no! But old Fan—I beg your pardon, I mean Miss Cronin—Miss Cronin has a peculiar—but she is very charming. I gave her your message, and she quite understood. We were talking about plum cake. That is why I was so long.”