"My dear Lady Peggy," he inquired, "whence this exceptional industry?"
She closed the book and looked up at him with twinkling eyes.
"Well, I didn't mean to tell a soul until it was finished," she declared, "but you've just caught me. I've had such a brilliant idea. I'm going to write a Society Encyclopædia!"
"A Society Encyclopædia!" he repeated uncertainly. "'Pon my word, I'm not quite sure that I understand."
She motioned him to sit down by her side.
"I'll explain," she said. "You know we're all expected to know something about everything nowadays, and it's such a bore reading up things. I'm going to compile a little volume of definitions. I shall sell it at a guinea a copy, pay all my debts, and become quite respectable again."
Deyes shook his head. His attitude was scarcely sympathetic.
"My dear Lady Peggy, what nonsense!" he declared. "Respectable, indeed! I call it positively pandering to the middle classes!"
"It is a horrid word, isn't it?" she admitted, "but it would be lovely to make some money. Of course, I haven't absolutely decided how to spend it yet. It does seem rather a waste, doesn't it, to pay one's debts, but think of the luxury of feeling one could do it if one wanted to!"
"There's something in that," Deyes admitted. "But an encyclopædia! My dear Lady Peggy, you don't know what you're talking about. I've got one somewhere, I know. It came in a van, and it took two of the men to unload it."
"Oh! I don't mean that sort, of course," she declared. "I mean just a little gilt-edged text book, bound in morocco, you know, with just those things in it we're likely to run up against. Radium, for instance. Now every one's talking about radium. Do you know what radium is?"
Deyes swung his eyeglass carefully by its black riband.
"Well," he admitted, "I've a sort of idea, but I'm not very good at definitions."
"Of course not," Lady Peggy declared triumphantly. "When it comes to the point, you see what a good idea mine is. You turn to my textbook," she added, turning the pages over rapidly, "and there you are. Radium! 'A hard, rare substance, invented by Mr. Gillette to give tone to his bachelor parties.' What do you think of that?"
"Wonderful!" Deyes declared solemnly. "Where do you get your information from?"