Part 5 (1/2)
”You're simply wonderful, Barker! I don't see how you manage to make a room so cosy!” Jill sat down on the club fender that guarded the fireplace, and held her hands over the blaze. ”I can't understand why men ever marry. Fancy having to give up all this!”
”I am gratified that you appreciate it, miss. I did my best to make it comfortable for you. I fancy I hear Mr. Rooke coming now.”
”I hope the others won't be long. I'm starving. Has Mrs. Barker got something very good for dinner?”
”She has strained every nerve, miss.”
”Then I'm sure it's worth waiting for. Hullo, Freddie.”
Freddie Rooke, resplendent in evening dress, bustled in, patting his tie with solicitous fingers. It had been right when he had looked in the gla.s.s in his bedroom, but you never know about ties. Sometimes they stay right, sometimes they wriggle up sideways. Life is full of these anxieties.
”I shouldn't touch it,” said Jill. ”It looks beautiful, and, if I may say so in confidence, is having a most disturbing effect on my emotional nature. I'm not at all sure I shall be able to resist it right through the evening. It isn't fair of you to try to alienate the affections of an engaged young person like this.”
Freddie squinted down, and became calmer.
”Hullo, Jill, old thing. n.o.body here yet?”
”Well, I'm here--the _pet.i.te_ figure seated on the fender. But perhaps I don't count.”
”Oh, I didn't mean that, you know.”
”I should hope not, when I've bought a special new dress just to fascinate you. A creation I mean. When they cost as much as this one did, you have to call them names. What do you think of it?”
Freddie seated himself on another section of the fender, and regarded her with the eye of an expert. A snappy dresser, as the technical term is, himself, he appreciated snap in the outer covering of the other s.e.x.
”Topping!” he said s.p.a.ciously. ”No other word for it. All wool and a yard wide. Precisely as mother makes it. You look like a thingummy.”
”How splendid. All my life I've wanted to look like a thingummy, but somehow I've never been able to manage it.”
”A wood-nymph!” exclaimed Freddie, in a burst of unwonted imagery. He looked at her with honest admiration. ”Dash it, Jill, you know, there's something about you! You're--what's the word?--you've got such small bones.”
”Ugh! I suppose it's a compliment, but how horrible it sounds! It makes me feel like a skeleton.”
”I mean to say, you're--you're dainty!”
”That's much better.”
”You look as if you weighed about an ounce and a half. You look like a bit of thistledown! You're a little fairy princess, dash it!”
”Freddie! This is eloquence!” Jill raised her left hand, and twiddled a ringed finger ostentatiously. ”Er--you _do_ realize that I'm bespoke, don't you, and that my heart, alas, is another's? Because you sound as if you were going to propose.”
Freddie produced a snowy handkerchief, and polished his eye-gla.s.s.
Solemnity descended on him like a cloud. He looked at Jill with an earnest, paternal gaze.
”That reminds me,” he said. ”I wanted to have a bit of a talk with you about that--being engaged and all that sort of thing. I'm glad I got you alone before the Curse arrived.”
”Curse? Do you mean Derek's mother? That sounds cheerful and encouraging.”
”Well, she is, you know,” said Freddie earnestly. ”She's a bird! It would be idle to deny it. She always puts the fear of G.o.d into me. I never know what to say to her.”
”Why don't you try asking her riddles?”