“No; not even that. I’m more and more convinced it’s a distinct lapse on my part; but again I’m compelled to confess incompetency. When did what happen at approximately eight P.M. on December the sixth?”
Darley Roberts stroked his great chin with reminiscent deliberation.
“On December sixth, at eight o’clock P.M., precisely one year ago,” he explained minutely, “a certain man called on a certain young woman of his acquaintance for the first time. It was, I am reliably informed, a momentous occasion for him. Moreover he—Had you really forgotten, Elice?”
“Yes—the date.”
“Strange. I hadn’t. Perhaps, though, it 167 meant more to me than to you.” He laughed peculiarly. “I fancy I didn’t tell you at the time that it was the first call I’d ever made on a young woman in my life.” He laughed again with tolerant amusement. “I was thirty-three years old then, too.”
The girl drew a thread of green from a bundle of silk in her lap deliberately. “No; you never told me that,” she corroborated.
The wrinkles gathering about Darley Roberts’ eyes suddenly deepened, infallible precursor of the unexpected.
“By the way,” he digressed, “I’m growing curious to know what you do with those things you’re embroidering, those—”
“Lunch cloths?”
“That’s it, lunch cloths. The present makes seven, one after the other, you’ve completed. I’ve kept count.”