"And did you talk to Trixy about children, too?" cried Lily, laughing, with a mischievous glance at Mrs. Chandos.
"Is he interested in them?" asked Honora.
"You dear!" cried Lily, "you'll be the death of me. Lula, Honora wants to know whether Trixy is interested in children."
Mrs. Chandos, in the act of lighting a cigarette, smiled sweetly.
"Apparently he is," she said.
"It's time he were, if he's ever going to be," said Honora, just as sweetly.
Everybody laughed but Mrs. Chandos, who began to betray an intense interest in some old lace in the corner of the room.
"I bought it for nothing, my dear," said Mrs. Dallam, but she pinched Honora's arm delightedly. "How wicked of you!" she whispered, "but it serves her right."
In the midst of the discussion of clothes and house rents and other people's possessions, interspersed with anecdotes of a kind that was new to Honora, Sidney Dallam appeared at the door and beckoned to her.
"How silly of you, Sid!" exclaimed his wife; "of course she doesn't want to go."