Honora laughed happily, and they sat down side by side on the lounge behind the tea table.
"I heard you'd married," said Ethel, "but I didn't know what had become of you until the other day. Jim never tells me anything. It appears that he's seen something of you. But it wasn't from Jim that I heard about you first. You'd never guess who told me you were here."
"Who?" asked Honora, curiously.
"Mr. Erwin."
"Peter Erwin!"
"I'm perfectly shameless," proclaimed Ethel Wing. "I've lost my heart to him, and I don't care who knows it. Why in the world didn't you marry him?"
"But—where did you see him?" Honora demanded as soon as she could command herself sufficiently to speak. Her voice must have sounded odd. Ethel did not appear to notice that.
"He lunched with us one day when father had gout. Didn't he tell you about it? He said he was coming to see you that afternoon."
"Yes—he came. But he didn't mention being at lunch at your house."
"I'm sure that was like him," declared her friend. And for the first time in her life Honora experienced a twinge of that world-old ailment —jealousy. How did Ethel know what was like him? "I made father give him up for a little while after lunch, and he talked about you the whole time. But he was most interesting at the table," continued Ethel, sublimely unconscious of the lack of compliment in the comparison; "as Jim would say, he fairly wiped up the ground with father, and it isn't an easy thing to do."