Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/181

Rh the china and silver and the coloured dishes shone delightfully. We were all very gay and bright; who could be otherwise, seated round a well-laid table, with young company, and the snow outside. George felt awkward when he noticed his hands over the table, but for the rest, we enjoyed ourselves exceedingly.

The conversation veered inevitably to marriage.

“But what have you to say about it, Mr. Smith?”asked little Marie.

“Nothing yet,” replied he in his peculiar grating voice. “My marriage is in the unanalysed solution of the future—when I»ve done the analysis I’ll tell you.”

“But what do you think about it—?”

“Do you remember Lettie,” said Will Bancroft, “that little red-haired girl who was in our year at college? She has just married old Craven out of Physic’s department.”

“I wish her joy of it!” said Lettie ; “wasn’t she an old flame of yours?”

“Among the rest,” he replied smiling. “Don’t you remember you were one of them; you had your day.”

“What a joke that was!” exclaimed Lettie, “we used to go in the arboretum at dinner-time. You lasted half one autumn. Do you remember when we gave a concert, you and I, and Frank Wishaw, in the small lecture theatre?”

“When the Prinny was such an old buck, flattering you,” continued Will. “And that night Wishaw took you to the station—sent old Gettim for a cab and saw you in, large as life—never was such a thing