“No,” said Mildred, “she hates a crowd.”
Only the family and two very old friends were present therefore, so that the conversation was general. Mr. Parker, who had recently flown to Paris and back in the day, just for fun, gave an account of his interesting experience, to which Miss Verinder listened with great attention.
Then, towards the end of dinner, she herself talking freely, told them about a very nice young man that she had met. She praised him for his modesty as well as his niceness. Quite the best type of the clever and yet not conceited youth of the present day! She understood that he had done very well in the war; and he was now on the stage—Mr. Alwyn Beckett. “By the way—I believe he said he knew you all, or some of you.”
Only Hubert Parker spoke. “One of my best pals,” said Hubert.
Mildred was staring at the tablecloth and crumbling the remains of a small roll; Mrs. Parker seemed to have been troubled with a twinge of toothache or rheumatism; Mr. Parker, suddenly red in the face, opened his mouth and, shutting it, breathed hard through his nose. It was one of those brief silences that appear to be long. Then Mr. Parker, recovering himself, asked Miss Verinder if she had read Mr. Locke’s delightful new novel.
Following the modern fashion, the ladies and the men left the dinner-table together. Upstairs, in the double drawing-room, Hubert and Mildred soon set in action a monstrous gramophone of the latest model and most expensive style, both of them giggling hysterically while they assisted each other with the record and the mechanism.
“How can you be so ridiculous?” asked Mrs. Parker, speaking to them from the front room. “What is the joke?”
Mildred chokingly replied that there was no joke. It was only the gramophone that made them laugh. In fact, they had been overcome by the calm unscrupulousness of Miss Verinder’s dinner gambit.
The two old friends liked the gramophone; and directly its crackling music began to fill both rooms, Mr. Parker seated himself beside Miss Verinder and explained to her that she had unwittingly touched on a very sore spot when she mentioned the name of “that young man.” Mrs. Parker came and sat on the other side of her, and both together told her all about Mildred’s absurd infatuation. Then they begged her aid in bringing Mildred to her senses.
“That is really why I have put you au courong,” said Mr. Parker. “You have influence with her. A word in season from you may have great effect.”