Audrey was recovering. “You’re pretty sporting, Jimmie. You have nerve. I think I was mistaken about you. All right. You requisition me. I’ll do a little bundling for Britain—”
He chuckled and broke off, looking at her in a startled way. Then he chuckled again. “Jolly old reconciliation, ho! What? As I never heard an Englishman say!”
“Which reminds me to note that you don’t talk so awfully much like an Englishman, considering how long you lived there. A little. I mean, you’d know you’d been exposed to the accent—”
“Two reasons, Audrey. One, I was always proud of my native vernacular. My pronunciation was the bane of the dons. All Oxford shivered whenever I opened my mouth to speak. Two, it was a long trip home—grimy weather, no diversion on the boat-and I spent the time refreshing my memory of the provincial tongue. Listening to several Americans from Chicago—steel men—who shared the bar with me a good deal of the time.”
“We might stop by the bar, on the way back. The floor show’s still going on, that M. C. is practically inexhaustible.”
He offered his arm, with a mocking ultraelegance. “I’d imagine that it’s his audience that gets exhausted. M. C.—master of ceremonies, I presume. A new phrase, since my day.” They walked toward the club bar. “Audrey. Tell me something. Why did my handsome and all-pervading mother appoint you to pursue me?”
“You ought to be able to guess.”
“Ought I? Lemme see.” He helped her hike up on a bar stool. “Pounds, crowns, shillings?”
“On the nose! My father is president of the Second National. The other big bank here.”
“It was always the old man who talked about mergers. Habit’s catching, evidently.”