"Weren't you employed in an office or something, when old Will discovered—er—met you? And didn't you run—that is, operate—a typing machine there?"
"I was a housemaid before I was married," replied Daisy, dimpling, "and I didn't know a typewriter from a bale of hay."
"Ah!" commented Lord Arthur, regarding her. "I say, old Will's a queer sort, don't you think?" he added, with apparent irrelevance, after a moment.
Daisy rose to her feet and tossed her tennis racquet down on the bench.
"Not half so queer as some people I could name," she observed, pinning on her hat. "I'm going down town. Do you want to come, or will you stay here? There's a book up in the library about writers or painters or something. I came across it the other day when I was looking for something else. Full of pictures of homely-looking men, it is—some of them bald-headed, and others with hair down to the coat-collars."
"I'll stay and glance over the book," said Lord Arthur, stretching out luxuriously on the bench; "I say, get it and bring it out, will you, there's a good soul. I shouldn't wonder if it's jolly interesting. Baldheaded men! You are a rum one."
"Get it yourself, you lazy, long-legged lump," said Daisy, promptly; "who was your servant this time last year?"
"Ah—sorry," murmured Lord Arthur (the words were apologetic, but the tone was supercilious); "I'll go and fetch it myself." He marched off to the house; and as he marched, he muttered: "'Long-legged lump!' Jowve, but it's wickid—poor old Will!"
Daisy went up to her pretty suite of rooms with their ivied balcony. She did not notice the details of their furnishings now with quite so fresh and keen a pleasure as on that first morning, now two months past, when she had opened new-waked eyes in the dainty, pink bedroom. She stepped about now with a casual and proprietary air—turning the shower on in the bathroom for a cooling splash after her recent game of tennis with young Lord Arthur, (Ware's second cousin, "just out")—laying out a simple, girlish dress from her well-stocked wardrobe—shaking out a folded towel or two and laying them handily on the glass rack at the end of the bathtub. Ada the maid was at her service if she cared to ring. But Daisy had been her own maid for seventeen years and intended to keep on in the same way.
Only a few moments elapsed till, smart and parasolled, she stepped out through the side door and into the cinder-path that led, with many a leisurely looping, to the picket-gate that gave to the street. Life at the Wares' had wrought some changes in her appearance. The color in her face was more delicate, and her skin clearer. Her modiste had corseted her in long willowy lines, so that, although her height had not increased a particle, she looked taller. Her ankles, in their silk stockings, showed a more shapely fulness where they met the hem of her short neat walking-skirt.