Alice on Hotels

She was wearing the same red roses.

“Oh!” she said, very quickly, pouring out the words generously from the inexhaustible mine of her good heart.  “I’m so sorry I missed you Saturday night.  I can’t tell you how sorry I am.  Of course it was all my fault.  I oughtn’t to have got into the lift without you.  I ought to have waited.  When I was in the lift I wanted to get out, but the lift-man was too quick for me.  And then on the platforms—­well, there was such a crowd it was useless!  I knew it was useless.  And you not having my address either!  I wondered whatever you would think of me.”

“My dear lady!” he protested.  “I can assure you I blamed only myself.  My hat blew off, and——­”

“Did it now!” she took him up breathlessly.  “Well, all I want you to understand really is that I’m not one of those silly sort of women that go losing themselves.  No.  Such a thing’s never happened to me before, and I shall take good care——­”

She glanced round.  He had paid both the cabmen, who were departing, and he and Mrs. Alice Challice stood under the immense glass portico of the Grand Babylon, exposed to the raking stare of two commissionaires.

“So you are staying here!” she said, as if laying hold of a fact which she had hitherto hesitated to touch.

“Yes,” he said.  “Won’t you come in?”

He took her into the rich gloom of the Grand Babylon dashingly, fighting against the demon of shyness and beating it off with great loss.  They sat down in a corner of the principal foyer, where a few electric lights drew attention to empty fauteuils and the blossoms on the Aubusson carpet.  The world was at lunch.

“And a fine time I had getting your address!” said she.  “Of course I wrote at once to Selwood Terrace, as soon as I got home, but I had the wrong number, somehow, and I kept waiting and waiting for an answer, and the only answer I received was the returned letter.  I knew I’d got the street right, and I said, ’I’ll find that house if I have to ring every bell in Selwood Terrace, yes’, and knock every knocker!’ Well, I did find it, and then they wouldn’t give me your address.  They said ‘letters would be forwarded,’ if you please.  But I wasn’t going to have any more letter business, no thank you!  So I said I wouldn’t go without the address.  It was Mr. Duncan Farll’s clerk that I saw.  He’s living there for the time being.  A very nice young man.  We got quite friendly.  It seems Mr. Duncan Farll was in a state when he found the will.  The young man did say that he broke a typewriter all to pieces.  But the funeral being in Westminster Abbey consoled him.  It wouldn’t have consoled me—­no, not it!  However, he’s very rich himself, so that doesn’t matter.  The young man said if I’d call again he’d ask his master if he might give me your address.  A rare fuss over an address, thought I to myself.  But there!  Lawyers!  So I called again, and he gave it me.  I could have come yesterday.  I very nearly wrote last night.  But I thought on the whole I’d better wait till the funeral was over.  I thought it would be nicer.  It’s over now, I suppose?”