“Lily-of-the-field, yourself!” returned the girl indignantly. “I’ve brought a lot of work up here with me. Can you say the same?”
“Guilty! I’m jobless, except as your present slave.”
“Have you ever done anything worth while in the world?” Darcy challenged; but the smile with which she accompanied the words was indulgent.
He took silent counsel with himself. “At a class reunion I once chased a trolley-car on a dromedary,” he said hopefully. “That made life temporarily happier for a good many people, including the dromedary, who was conducting the performance.”
“Sir Monty—my real Sir Monty—used to be an officer in a camel corps,” fabricated Darcy dreamily.
“Now, why drag in my fellow fiancé, just as I was beginning to forget him?” he expostulated.
“We—you—he isn’t to be forgotten,” said the girl hastily.
“Of course not. I’m sorry. Tell me about him.”
Attempting to do so, Darcy found that the flavor had unaccountably oozed out of her lie. Pretense and falsification with this man who had unprotestingly let himself in for an indefinite career of both on his own account, to aid a girl whom he didn’t even know in what, for all he could tell, might be only an unworthy prank—well, it simply went against the grain.
“No; I don’t believe I will just now,” she returned. “I might confuse him with your masterly impersonation.”