“Will you and these infants lunch with me to-morrow at the Carlton?”
“With pleasure,” said Quixtus.
“Do you know,” she said, “I’ve never been inside the place? It will be quite an adventure.”
A few moments later Tommy and herself were speeding westward in a taxi-cab. The boy spoke little. All his darling conceptions of Clementina had been upheaved, dynamited, tossed into the air and lay around him in amorphous fragments. Nor was she conversationally inclined. Tommy now was a tiny little speck in her horizon. Yet when the motor drew up at her house in Romney Place and he opened the gate for her, something significant happened.
He put out his hand. “Good-night, Clementina.”
She laughed. “Where are your manners, Tommy? Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
He hesitated, just the fraction of a second, and then kissed her. She ran up to her room exultant; not because she had been kissed; far from it. But because he had hesitated. Between Clementina fishfag and Clementina princess was a mighty gulf. She knew it. She exulted. She went to bed, but could not sleep. She had a headache; such a headache; a glorious headache; a thunder and lightning of a headache!
CHAPTER XXIV
Tommy, calling for Clementina the next morning; was confronted at the open door, not by Eliza, but by a demure damsel in a black frock, black apron, and a black bow in her hair, who said “Oui, monsieur,” when addressed. Tommy, still bewildered, asked whether she was a new lady’s maid. “Oui; monsieur,” said the damsel, and showed him into the Sheraton drawing-room. He sat down meekly and waited for Clementina. She came down soon, a resplendent vision, exquisitely gowned, perfectly hatted, delicately gloved, and in her hand she jingled a small goldsmith’s shop. She pirouetted round.
“Like it?”