When she replaced the receiver I stepped behind her and put my hands on her shoulders.
“'The mother of mischief,'” I quoted, “'is no bigger than a midge's wing,' and the grandmother is the match-making microbe that lurks in every woman's system.”
She caught one of my hands and looked up into my face.
“You're not cross with me, Simon?”
Her tone was that of the old Agatha. I laughed, remembering the policeman's salute of the previous night, and noted this recovery of my ascendancy as another indication of the general improvement in the attitude of London.
“Of course not, Tom Tit,” said I, calling her by her nursery name. “But I absolutely forbid your thinking of playing Fairy Godmother.”
“You can forbid my playing,” she laughed, “and I can obey you. But you can't prevent my thinking. Thought is free.”
“Sometimes, my dear,” I retorted, “it is better chained up.”
With this rebuke I left her. No doubt, she considered a renewal of my engagement with Eleanor Faversham a romantic solution of difficulties. I could only regard it as preposterous, and as I walked back to Victoria Street I convinced myself that Eleanor's frank offer of friendship proved that such an idea never entered her head. I took vehement pains to convince myself Spring had come; like the year, I had awakened from my lethargy. I viewed life through new eyes; I felt it with a new heart. Such vehement pains I was not capable of taking yesterday.
“It has never entered her head!” I declared conclusively.