"Look here! A little less of the Queen of Sheba, if you don't mind. Don't forget I'm one of the blokes as is glad to smell the gratings outside a baker's."
Dorothy did not think this remark particularly amusing; there was quite enough genuine cockney to be endured on the stage without having to listen to an exaggerated imitation of it in Bond Street. Olive, however, was laughing, and Dorothy decided to take Sylvia down a peg by asking what she was doing now.
"Resting, Dolly, but always open to a good offer. Same old firm. Lily and Skinner. The original firm makes boots; we mar them. The trouble is that I can't find anything to skin; I tried Rabbit's, the rival boot-shop, but even they wanted cash. However, Lily's quite content to go on resting, so that's all right."
"My dear," exclaimed Dorothy, in affected dismay, "you're not still living with that dreadful girl?"
"Oh, go to hell!" said Sylvia, sharply, and strode off down Bond Street.
"What an attractive girl!" Olive exclaimed.
"She's just the sort of person who would amuse the great man," Olive declared.
"Dorothy," she murmured, reproachfully, "you know you don't bore him. He was only saying yesterday that he wished he could ride with you in the Row."
"You'd better get Sylvia Scarlett to share the flat with you," went on Dorothy.
"How can you say things like that? You know I love you better than anybody in the world. You know how beautiful I think you, how clever, Dorothy; it's really unkind to suggest that any other girl could take your place."
"If you're so anxious to know her," Dorothy continued, "I'll write and ask her to come and see us."
"I shouldn't like you to think I would stand in the way of your meeting anybody you took a fancy to, man or woman."
Olive protested again and again that Dorothy had utterly misjudged her and that she never wished to see Sylvia Scarlett again. The argument lasted so long and the whole question of whether or not Sylvia should be invited to Halfmoon Mansions assumed such importance that after lunch Dorothy wrote and invited Sylvia, and not merely Sylvia, but Lily as well, to come and have tea with them the next day. She told herself when she had posted the letter that she was probably committing a great folly by introducing to her friends two people who knew so much about her, and she asked herself in amazement what mad obstinacy had led her into such a course of action.