"Yes, I should say. Who'd believe we should be so mad as to rush off to Greenwich on a pouring morning for breakfast? No, I must say I slept with Ireen."
"Well, why don't you come back and go to bed at my place?" Irene suggested. "You can go home tea-time."
Maudie and Madge decided to copy the example of the other two, by going back together to Mrs. Wilson's house near the Elephant and Castle.
"Only we ought to change our clothes first," Jenny said. "What of it though? We've got cloaks."
"I shouldn't mind changing," said Castleton. "These claret-colored overalls of mine will inevitably attract the public vision."
"Rot!" said Maurice. "We can all drive down to the Elephant--although, by the way, we ought to stop at the Marquis of Granby and look at the Museum."
"To the deuce with all museums," cried Ronnie. "I want my bed."
"You are an unsporting lot," Maurice protested. "Then we'll stop at the 'Elephant,' and the girls can go home in two taxis and we'll go back in the others."
So it was arranged; and, having paid the bill and politely assented to the waiter's suggestion that they should come over in the summer-time to a whitebait dinner, they left behind them the Sloop Hotel, Greenwich.
On the way back to London, Maurice attempted to point out to Jenny the foolishness of her present style of living.
"All this fuss about whether you go home before or after the milk. I can't understand why you let yourself be a slave to a family. I really can't."
"But I'm not," said Jenny indignantly. "Only that doesn't say I'm going to live with you, if that's what you mean."
Somehow the wet and dreary morning gave a certain crudity of outline to the situation, destroying romantic enchantments and accentuating the plain and ugly facts.
"You'd be ever so much happier if you did."
"Well, what an unnatural time to talk about where I'm going to live and what I'm going to do."
"It's extraordinary," said Maurice, "how much you're influenced by the unimportant little things of life. I'm as much in love with you now as I was last night when we were waltzing. You're not."
"Damn it. Don't go on saying that. I can't think where you got hold of that infernal expression."
"You are in a nasty mood," said Jenny sullenly.