Apparently the diversion recalled something to her mind.
"There was a man in here asking about you today,"
she remarked, in a casual fashion. "Said he was an old
friend of yours."
"Oh, yes, everybody's my 'old friend' now," he observed
with beaming indifference. "I'm already getting heaps
of invitations to dinners and dances and all that.
One fellow insisted on booking me for Easter for some
salmon fishing he's got way down in Cumberland.
I told him I couldn't come, but he put my name down
all the same. Says his wife will write to remind me.
Damn his wife! Semple tells me that when our squeeze
really begins and they realize the desperate kind of trap
they're in, they'll simply shower attentions of that sort
on me. He says the social pressure they can command,
for a game of this kind, is something tremendous.
But I'm not to be taken in by it for a single pennyworth,
d'ye see? I dine with nobody! I fish and shoot and go
yachting with nobody! Julia and Alfred and our own home
in Ovington Square--that'll be good enough for me.
By the way--you haven't been out to see us yet.
We're all settled now. You must come at once--why not
with me, now?"
Louisa paid no heed to this suggestion. She had been
rummaging among some loose papers on the top of the desk,
and she stepped round now to lift the lid and search
about for something inside.
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