It is to be feared that the doctor was not paying attention. "What?" He brought his chair and his gaze down together. He had been tilting back in the chair and looking at the ceiling. "What? Sally? Her foot, perhaps,—but that's all right years ago and it isn't likely that you meant that. No, Patty, I give it up. What's the answer?"
Miss Patty was disappointed. Perhaps she ought to have got used to being disappointed by Meriwether Beatty, by this time, but she hadn't. She sighed a little.
"No, I didn't mean her foot. I meant her wandering off with Eugene Spencer. He's the handsomest boy in the class. Doesn't it remind you of—of our own graduation and our wandering away—so?"
The doctor roared. "That was a good many years ago, Patty." It was unkind of him to remind her of that. "You couldn't expect me to remember the circumstances. I believe I am losing my memory; from old age, Patty, old age." That was more unkind still, for Patty was but a few months younger than he, and he knew it and she knew that he knew it. "So we wandered away, did we?"
Sally did not hear this conversation, for she was already halfway downstairs with Jane. Neither of them had spoken.
"Jane," she said suddenly.
A shadow of annoyance crossed his face. "Sally," he mildly protested, "I wish you wouldn't call me Jane—if you don't mind."
"Why," returned Sally in surprise, "don't you like it? I supposed you did. Of course I won't call you by a name you don't like. I'm very sorry. Eugene, then?"
"If you will. It's rather better than Jane, but it's bad enough."
Sally laughed. "You're hard to please. How would it do for me to call you Hugh—or Earl Spencer. Or, no. I'd have to call you your Grace." She stopped and made him a curtsy; Jane was not to be outdone and, although taken somewhat off his guard, he made her a bow with as much grace as even Piers Gaveston could have put into it.