Marie laughed. She had been very fond of this girl at school, but lately all her old affections seemed somehow to have shifted. The fault was in herself, she knew, so she tried her best to be nice to Dorothy to make up for the old feeling that was no longer in her heart.
228 "I'll take you to all the shops." she said. "We'll have a long day to-morrow."
"And where do I come in?" Chris asked quickly. His eyes were pleading as they looked at his wife.
"Men always hate shopping, don't they?" Dorothy chimed in. "They always look dreadfully out of place, anyway, poor dears."
"Well, I'll be the happy exception to prove the rule," Chris declared, and he kept his word. He trudged round the West End with his wife and Dorothy the following morning, and did his best not to appear bored. He took them to lunch at the Savoy, and escorted them to more shops afterwards.
"I think you've got a model husband," Dorothy said, when at last they drove home. "I never would have believed he was capable of it when we were up in Scotland. It only shows how one can be deceived."
But Chris gave a deep sigh of relief when they reached home. He went off to the dining-room and mixed himself a strong whiskey. He felt irritable, though he tried manfully to suppress his irritation. What waste of time it all was, he thought—trudging round on hot pavements, in and out stuffy, uninteresting shops, when one might be out in the country or up on the Scotch moors.
For three days he did his duty nobly. He was always in to meals—he took Marie and Dorothy to a matinee, and to dinner at the Carlton.
"We ought to have had another man to make a fourth," he said to his wife afterwards. "I'll ask Feathers to come to-morrow."
He did ask him, and Feathers refused. He had an appointment, he said, and would come another day.