"It's rather exuberantly cruel in places."
"Adorably savage, you _said!_"
"I wasn't criticising then. And I suppose," he went on,
with a shade of awkwardness, "I ought to thank you for
all the charming things you put in about me."
"Ah!" she returned, with a contemptuous pout and shrug,
"don't say that--it's like the others. But," she clinched
it notwithstanding, and rather quickly, "will you take
me to see Miss Cardiff? I mean," she added, noting his
look of consternation, "will you ask her if I may come?
I forget--we are in London."
At this moment the boy from below-stairs knocked with
tea and cakes, little Italian cakes in iced jackets and
paper boats. "Yes, certainly--yes, I will," said Kendal,
staring at the tray, and trying to remember when he had
ordered it; "but it's your plain duty to make us both
some tea, and to eat as many of these pink-and-white
things as you possibly can. They seem to have come down
from heaven for you."
They ate and drank and talked and were merry for quite
twenty minutes. Elfrida opened her notebook and threatened
absurdities of detail for publication in the _Age_; he
defied her, tilted his chair back, put his feet on a
packing-box, and smoked a cigarette.
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