Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/164

 "I am, of course, immensely flattered at his noticing me," he replied. "Otherwise, naturally, I should have resented being told to leave. As it was I didn't resent it a bit."

"Didn't you!" cried Harriet. "I know you and your pretences. That is what has put you in such a temper."

"But you remember I've been in a temper for days," he replied calmly and gravely. ""Therefore there could be no putting."

"Oh, it only made you worse. I'm tired of your temper, really."

"But Mr Somers isn't in a temper at all!" cried Victoria. "He's nicer than any of us, really. Jack would be as angry as anything if I said all those things to him. Shouldn't you, Jack? " And she cuddled his arm.

"You'd be shut up in the coal-shed for the night before you got half way through with it, if ever you started trying it on," he replied, with marital humour.

"No, I shouldn't, either: or it would be the last door you'd shut on me, so there. But anyhow you'd be in a waxy old temper.'

And she smiled at Somers as she cuddled her husband's arm.

"If my hostess says I'm nice," said Somers, "I am not going to feel guilty, whatever my wife may say."

"Oh yes, you do feel guilty," said Harriet.

"Your hostess doesn't find any fault with you at all," cried Victoria. She was looking very pretty, in a brown chiffon dress. "She thinks you're the nicest of anybody here, there."

"What?" cried Jack. "When I'm here as well?"

"Whether you're here or not. You're not very nice to me to-night, and William James never is. But Mr Somers is awfully nice." She blushed suddenly quite vividly, looking under her long lashes at him. He smiled a little more intensely to himself.

"I tell you what, Mrs Somers," said Jack. "We'd better make a swap of it, till they alter their opinion. You and me had better strike up a match, and let them two elope with one another for a bit."

"And what about William James?" cried Victoria, with hurried, vivid excitement.