“And Miss Ferriby?” inquired White, looking straight in front of him.
Cornish glanced quickly at his companion. “Oh, Joan?” he answered. “She is all right. Full of energy, you know--all the fads in their courses.”
“Oh yes; I get them too. Buttonholes come and buttonholes go. Have you noticed it? They get large. Neapolitan violets all over your left shoulder one day, and no flowers at all the week after.” Cornish spoke with a gravity befitting the subject. He was, it seemed a student of human nature in his way. “Of course,” he added, laying an impressive forefinger on White's gold-laced cuff, “it would never do if the world remained stationary.”
“Never,” said the major, darkly. “Never.”
They were talking to pass the time. Joan Ferriby had come between them, as a woman is bound to come between two men sooner or later. Neither knew what the other thought of Joan Ferriby, or if he thought of her at all. Women, it is to be believed, have a pleasant way of mentioning the name of a man with such significance that one of their party changes colour. When next she meets that man she does it again, and perhaps he sees it, and perhaps his vanity, always on the alert, magnifies that unfortunate blush. And they are married, and live unhappily ever afterwards. And--let us hope there is a hell for gossips. But men are different in their procedure. They are awkward and _gauche_. They talk of newspaper matters, and on the whole there is less harm done.
The hansom cab containing these two men pulled up jerkily at the door of No. 9, Cambridge Terrace. Tony Cornish hurried to the door, and rang the bell as if he knew it well. Major White followed him stiffly. They were ushered into a library on the ground floor, and were there received by a young lady, who, pen in hand, sat at a large table littered with newspaper wrappers.
“I am addressing the Haberdashers' Assistants,” she said, “but I am very glad to see you.”
Miss Joan Ferriby was one of those happy persons who never know a doubt. One must, it seems, be young to enjoy this nineteenth-century immunity. One must be pretty--it is, at all events, better to be pretty--and one must dress well. A little knowledge of the world, a decisive way of stating what pass at the moment for facts, a quick manner of speaking--and the rest comes _tout seul_. This cocksureness is in the atmosphere of the day, just as fainting and curls and an appealing helplessness were in the atmosphere of an earlier Victorian period.