"Why do you harp on my age so?... If I am old enough to be your father, it doesn't follow that I'm too old to be your lover?"

He was standing clos to her now, looking down into her face, and Hal felt a little conscious tremor run through her blood. She faced him squarely, however, and answered in a gay, careless voice:

"Of course it doesn't, only, as I don't happen to want a lover, it's a contingency not worth considering."

"Perhaps the post is already filled?" he suggested, refusing likewise to be daunted.

"Quite filled. It's a case for a placard stating 'House Full', and you," she finished, "would naturally be at the tail end of the queue which has to go away."

He laughed with relish, and gave it up.

"I can see you will take some taming," he said, as he handed her into the car. "My weighty and important position evidently does not impress you in the least."

"Of course not, as you're a Liberal. They have so few really good men, they have to take anything they can get. Back up the Budget and the Chancellor, and exhibit a colossal amount of impudence, and there you are!"

"Well, there isn't much to boast of in the way of men on the Conservative side, is there? Chiefly a collection of cousins, and second-cousins, and cousins by marriage, shoved in by a few interfering old aunts. You don't need me to tell an enlightened young woman like you that even impudence might serve the country better than cousin-ship."

"I wonder sometimes if any of you honestly put the country first at any time; or whether it is just a popular name for a very big 'me'?"

"You are such a little sceptic. Do you always credit people with self-interested motives?"

"I don't know that I do; but if you are a city-worker it is a fairly safe basis to work upon, until you can find proof that you are wrong."

He looked down at her with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"What a wise little head it is! Do you know, I don't think I ever met any one quite like you before,"

"What you have missed!" was the gay rejoinder, and they both laughed.

"I suppose I mustn't take you home?" as they neared Piccadilly.

"Brother Dudley might see us?"

"No, thanks. If you will drop me at Hyde Park Corner I will take a homely bus, and return to my Bloomsbury level."

"Until my next free afternoon, I hope. Will you come again soon?"

"Perhaps."

"What do you do on Sundays?"

"I generally go out with d.i.c.k Bruce."

"Does d.i.c.k Bruce consider himself ent.i.tled to every Sunday?"

"Well, I consider myself ent.i.tled to d.i.c.k!..." laughing.

"You're evidently very fond of d.i.c.k."

"Very," with enthousiasm. "I have been for twenty-five years. We were like the two babies in _Punch_ which said, 'Help yourself and pa.s.s the bottle.'"

"d.i.c.k's a lucky devil. Does he take Sat.u.r.day afternoons as well?"

"No; he plays cricket or hockey then."

"Then may I have a Sat.u.r.day afternoon?"

"It would be jolly;" and a swift gleam in her eyes told him she meant it.

""Very well. I shall consider that a promise. The first Sat.u.r.day I can arrange, we'll run down to some little place on the coast, and get some sea air. And if you feel inclined to write me a letter between now and then, send it to York Chambers, Jermyn Street."

He pulled up, and instantly she exclaimed in haste:

"Oh, there's my bus. Good-bye, thanks awfully; I must fly"; and before he could get in another word, he saw her clambering on to a motor-omnibus, with the utmost unconcern for his sudden, astonished solitarness.

"Gad!... what a woman she'll be one day," was his comment. "If she'd a hundred thousand pounds I wouldn't mind marrying her myself; she'd never let a chap get bored. I'll warrant," He moved slowly down Piccadilly. "Most of them do," he cogitated; "it doesn't seem as if there were one woman in a thousand who didn't soon become a bore.

Heigh-ho, but debts are more boring still sometimes, and I want a fifty-thousand cheque badly."

CHAPTER XV

When Hal went to tell Lorraine of her adventure she found her a victim of the prevailing malady, kept indoors two days with influenza. She was not in bed, but lying on a sofa, by a small fire, looking very frail and ill. Hal did not say much, as Lorraine disliked fussing, but her heart smote her to think she had been absent two days while her friend was a prisoner.

"Why didn't you tell Jean to 'phone me?" she asked. "I would have got here somehow."

Instead of answering, Lorraine nestled down into her cushions, and said:

"It's dreadful nice to see you, chummy."

Hal drew up a footstool, and sat down with her head against the sofa.

"What does the court physician say, Lorry? Of course he is generally fathering and brothering and mothering you as well as doctoring?"

"Yes; he is taking care of me in a sort of all-round, comprehensive fashion. I don't know what I should do without him."

"Do! ... "with a little laugh. "Why, just have another court physician instead." Hal's eyes strayed round the room. "What loverly flowers, Lorraine! Don't they almost make you feel a corpse?"

"They would if they were white, I dare say."

On a little table by the sofa was a bowl of violets, looking very sweet and homely amoung the beautiful exotics filling all the other vases.

Hal buried her nose in them.

"How delicious! Who ventured to send you royal highness anything so homely as violets?"

Lorraine's eyes rested on them with a look of tenderness. "Some one not very well off," she said, "who had the perspicacity to know I should value them from him more than the choicest blooms."