Page:The Secret of Chimneys - 1987.djvu/38

 “You could do all the same things still. Go about, and all that. You’d hardly notice me about the house.”

“Bill, you don’t understand. I’m the kind of person who marries enthusiastically if they marry at all.”

Bill gave a hollow groan.

“I shall shoot myself one of these days, I expect,” he murmured gloomily.

“No, you won’t, Bill darling. You’ll take a pretty girl out to supper—like you did the night before last.”

Mr. Eversleigh was momentarily confused.

“If you mean Dorothy Kirkpatrick, the girl who’s in Hooks and Eyes, I—well, dash it all, she’s a thoroughly nice girl, straight as they make ’em. There was no harm in it.”

“Bill, darling, of course there wasn’t. I love you to enjoy yourself. But don’t pretend to be dying of a broken heart, that’s all.”

Mr. Eversleigh recovered his dignity.

“You don’t understand at all, Virginia,” he said severely. “Men”

“Are polygamous! I know they are. Sometimes I have a shrewd suspicion that I am polyandrous. If you really love me, Bill, take me out to lunch quickly.”