“May I really dine with you?  In these travelling things?” he said, wiping his forehead before sitting down beside her.

She was too lovely to be true, he thought.  Just to look at her for an hour, just to hear her voice, was enough reward for his journey and his fears.

“Of course.  I suppose you’ve left your fly in the village, and will be going on from Mezzago by the night train.”

“Or stay in Mezzago in an hotel and go on to-morrow.  But tell me,” he said, gazing at the adorable profile, “about yourself.  London has been extraordinarily dull and empty.  Lady Droitwich said you were with people here she didn’t know.  I hope they’ve been kind to you?  You look—­well, as if your cure had done everything a cure should.”

“They’ve been very kind,” said Scrap.  “I got them out of an advertisement.”

“An advertisement?”

“It’s a good way, I find, to get friends.  I’m fonder of one of these than I’ve been of anybody in years.”

“Really?  Who is it?”

“You shall guess which of them it is when you see them.  Tell me about mother.  When did you see her last?  We arranged not to write to each other unless there was something special.  I wanted to have a month that was perfectly blank.”

“And now I’ve come and interrupted.  I can’t tell you how ashamed I am—­both of having done it and of not having been able to help it.”

“Oh, but,” said Scrap quickly, for he could not have come on a better day, when up there waiting and watching for her was, she knew, the enamoured Briggs, “I’m really very glad indeed to see you.  Tell me about mother.”

Chapter 20

Scrap wanted to know so much about her mother that Arundel had presently to invent.  He would talk about anything she wished if only he might be with her for a while and see her and hear her, but he knew very little of the Droitwiches and their friends really—­beyond meeting them at those bigger functions where literature is also represented, and amusing them at luncheons and dinners, he knew very little of them really.  To them he had always remained Mr. Arundel; no one called him Ferdinand; and he only knew the gossip also available to the evening papers and the frequenters of clubs.  But he was, however, good at inventing; and as soon as he had come to an end of first-hand knowledge, in order to answer her inquires and keep her there to himself he proceeded to invent.  It was quite easy to fasten some of the entertaining things he was constantly thinking on to other people and pretend they were theirs.  Scrap, who had that affection for her parents which warms in absence, was athirst for news, and became more and more interested by the news he gradually imparted.

At first it was ordinary news.  He had met her mother here, and seen her there.  She looked very well; she said so and so.  But presently the things Lady Droitwich had said took on an unusual quality:  they became amusing.