Page:Twilight Sleep (Grosset).pdf/320

RV 312 "Won't I do as a proxy? I was going to suggest your carrying me off to lunch."

"No, my dear, you won't—as a proxy. But I'll carry you off to lunch."

The choice of a restaurant would have been laborious—for Wyant, when taken out of his rut, became a mass of manias, prejudices and inhibitions—but Nona luckily remembered a new Bachelor Girls' Club ("The Singleton") which she had lately joined, and packed him into a taxi still protesting.

They found a quiet corner in a sociable low-studded dining-room, and she leaned back, listening to his disconnected monologue and smoking one cigarette after another in the nervous inability to eat.

The ten days on the island? Oh, glorious, of course—hot sunshine—a good baking for his old joints. Awfully kind of her father to invite him he'd appreciated it immensely  was going to write a line of thanks Jim, too, had appreciated his father's being included Only, no, really; he couldn't stay; in the circumstances he couldn't

"What circumstances, Exhibit? Getting the morning papers twenty-four hours late?"

Wyant frowned, looked at her sharply, and then laughed an uneasy wrinkled laugh. "Impertinent chit !"

"Own up, now; you were bored stiff. Communion with Nature was too much for you. You couldn't stick it. Few can."