“Thanks very much. You needn’t bother,” interrupted Alan gruffly.
“Otherwise I shall tell you what a perfect person you are.”
“Get out,” said Alan, flinging a cushion.
Michael left him and went down to the Randolph. He found Stella already dressed and waiting impatiently in the lobby for his arrival. His mother was not yet down.
“It’s all right,” he began, “I’ve destroyed the last vestige of Alan’s masculine vanity. Mother will be all right—if,” said Michael severely, pausing to relish the flavor of what might be the last occasion on which he would administer with authority a brotherly admonition. “_If_ you don’t put on a lot of side and talk about being twenty-one in a couple of months. Do you understand?”
Stella for answer flung her arms round his neck, and Michael grew purple under the conspicuous affront she had put upon his dignity.
“You absurd piece of pomposity,” she said. “I really adore you.”
“For God’s sake don’t talk in that exaggerated way,” Michael muttered. “I hope you aren’t going to make a public ass of Alan like that. He’d be rather sick.”
“If you say another word,” Stella threatened, “I’ll clap my hands and go dancing all round this hotel.”
At lunch Michael explained that he was not coming to town for a day or two, and his mother accepted his announcement with her usual gracious calm. Just before they were getting ready to enter their cab to go to the station, Michael took her aside.
“Mother, you’ll be very sympathetic, won’t you?” Then he whispered to her, fondling her arm. “They really are so much in love, but Alan will never be able to explain how much, and I swear to you he and Stella were made for each other.”
“But they don’t want to be married at once?” asked Mrs. Fane, in some alarm.
“Oh, not to-morrow,” Michael admitted. “But don’t ask them to have a year’s engagement. Will you promise me?”
“Why don’t you come back to-night and talk to me about it?” she asked.
“Because they’ll be so delightful talking to you without me. I should spoil it. And don’t forget—Alan is a _slow_ bowler, but he gets wickets.”
Michael watched with a smile his mother waving to him from the cab while still she was vaguely trying to resolve the parting metaphor he had flung at her. As soon as the cab had turned the corner, he called for his bicycle and rode off to Wychford.