Page:Wiggin--Ladies-in-waiting.djvu/91

  “Yes, she told me. How could you go to America without saying good-bye, Miss Tommy?”

She flushed and looked perilously near tears.

“I wrote to you this morning as soon as I had decided,” she said. “I don’t like to dart off in this way, you can imagine, but it’s a question of must.”

He did not argue this with her; that was a bridge to be crossed when a better understanding had been reached; so, as if taking the journey as an inexorable fact, he said: “Come out and dine with me somewhere, and let us have a good talk.”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m eating now on a tray in my sitting-room,”—and she waved a table napkin she was holding in her hand. “I am rather tired, and Miss Scattergood gave me some bacon and an egg from the nest.”

“Give the bacon to the cat and put back the egg in the nest,” he said coaxingly. “Mrs. Kennion said: ‘Don’t let her eat