“A spray? What’s a spray?”
“Oh, I say! My sister always wears one. It’s a long chain of flowers reachin’ from your shoulder diagonally down to your waist.”
“Does your sister always have her sprays sent to her?”
“Well, rather! Don’t they send flowers to girls for dances in the States?”
“Well, rather! Didn’t I just ask you?”
This was very true, and after a moment of baffle Mr. Pogis said, in generalization, “If you go with a young lady in a party to the theatre you send her a box of chocolates.”
“Only when you go to theatre! I couldn’t get enough, then, unless you asked me every night,” said Lottie, and while Mr. Pogis was trying to choose between “Oh, I say!” and something specific, like, “I should like to ask you every night,” she added, “And what would happen if you sent a girl a spray for the theatre and chocolates for a dance? Wouldn’t it jar her?”
Now, indeed, there was nothing for him but to answer, “Oh, I say!”
“Well, say, then! Here comes Boyne, and I must go. Well, Boyne,” she called, from the dark nook where she sat, to her brother as he stumbled near, with his eyes to the stars, “has the old lady retired?”
He gave himself away finely. “What old lady!”