Part 31 (2/2)
”It is not exactly off,” she replied, ”but it is more satisfactorily placed. We are going to be real good pals. He is going to keep me company in some of my lonely hours, and I am going to try and help him to get briefs. I am relying on you for the first one, Flip.”
”The d.i.c.kens you are. My dear girl, why should I put myself out to acquire a brief for a rival?”
”Oh, just because you are you. You know you will love it, Flip! You will get him a brief, and then you will pat yourself on the back and say: 'I know I'm a lazy dog myself, but I'm a devil of a good chap at getting other fellows work.'”
”So I am” - enjoying her thrust - ”and it's a splendid line, and gives far more satisfaction in the end. If I tried to work I should only make a mess of it, and drive some one nearly crazy, whereas, in putting another chap on to a job I give such a lot of folks pleasure, I feel I am getting square with the Almighty.”
”Then you'll try, Flip?”
”It is humanly possible, he shall have a brief of his very own within the next month.”
”You are a dear. Sometimes I think you are the most adorable person I know.”
”You don't think it long enough at a time, Lorry. You are too p.r.o.ne to go off suddenly after false G.o.ds measuring six-foot-five-and-a-half inches and with the faces of Apollo Belvederes.”
”Probably it is a merciful precaution on the part of our guardian angels, Flip; and, anyhow, you know you like a little variation yourself in the way of bulk, and sound, practical, indecorous chorus girldom.”
”I do,” was his unabashed affirmative. ”Nice, comfortable, elevating palliness with you; and a right down rollicking bust-up occasionally with the ladies of the unpretending school of wild oats.”
”I want my giant for the present to be satisfied with his palliness with me and his work. Do you think he will?”
”As I haven't seen him I can't say. If I get the chance, however, I'll tell him that ”wild oats' are the very devil, and I'd give all I've got to have stuck to work and had naught to do with'em.”
”You know you wouldn't, Flip,” with a little laugh.
”I know I couldn't, you mean; but I never admit it to juniors.”
”Well, you shall come to the flat to meet him. If he gets a brief, we'll have a little dinner party, and I'll ask Hal and her cousin and St. Quintin.”
”Right you are. I haven't seen Miss Pritchard for ages. Shall we turn now, and go back by Rottingdean?”
”Let us go wichever way has the best view of the sea. I feel I want to look at wide, breezy s.p.a.ces for a while, and not talk at all.”
”You shall,” he promised, and they sped along in silence.
CHAPTER XVII
When Hall sat on the side of her bed, brus.h.i.+ng her hair and meditating on her irritation, she had not misjudged when she antic.i.p.ated great enjoyment from an afternoon run with her new friend.
It would have been difficult indeed to say who enjoyed it the most.
Hal was in great form, and Sir Edwin Crathie half unconsciously took his tone from her, dropping his usual att.i.tude towards women he liked, and adopting instead one as gay and careless and inconsequent as hers.
It was not in the nature of the man to desist from flirting with her, but his pretty speeches were coupled with a humour and chaff that robbed them of any pointedness, and merely resulted in an amusing amount of parry and thrust, over which they both laughed whole-heartedly.
”You are an absolute witch,” he told her as they sat enjoying a big tea at an hotel on the south coast; ”ever since we started you have made me behave more or less like a school-boy, and a tea like this is the climax.”
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