Page:Hare and Tortoise (1925).pdf/82

 door. Then came the thought of her alleged remissness. "I hope I didn't out-faux Mrs. P. . . . I wonder how Keble would like me to call him Mr. E."

"No wonder Elsa doesn't stay there."

"But, Miriam, my faux pas! I won't be done out of my daily correction."

Miriam smiled indulgently. "It was the merest trifle. Indeed if Mrs. Pardy had made it, it would have done her credit. For that matter she did, effusively, and if we hadn't been such fastidious folk we should have lauded her for it. And I do!"

"Miriam . . . before I throw a bun at you!"

"Well, my dear, you invited the woman to pay you a visit."

"Jolly kind of me, too. Is that all?"

"Heavens, it's enough!"

"I was merely returning a hospitality,—the hospitality of your friends."

"Don't tease."

"After all, what less could I do when she practically gave us her house and her chauffeur and her marble staircase and diamond bracelets and ancestral lemon groves in California."

"None of which we wanted, you see. Nor asked for a thing! Nor accepted a thing except under compulsion. The mere fact that one strays into a house that looks like a glorified Turkish bath and has it, as you say, given to one, doesn't put one under the slightest obligation. We merely sat on the edge of her golden chairs, regretted Elsa's absence, heard