“I was asked to be chairman of a committee on dramatic censorship,” he explained. “That’s how I come to be interested in the subject.”
“You must have some more gooseberries,” insisted Lady Maitland swiftly, as he paused. “They’re from our own garden in Norfolk. Fruit always seems so much nicer when you’ve grown it yourself, don’t you think?... I was telling you about that salmon. The price—but prices don’t mean anything to a bachelor, _I’m_ sure; you just order what you fancy, and, if it’s not in season, so much the worse for you.” She laughed at her own audacity. “Well, the reason why salmon is so disgracefully dear is that ever so much has been deliberately allowed to go bad so as to force up the price of the rest. I always think it’s so wicked to waste food, don’t you? With so much want about. The people with small fixed incomes—I’m always so sorry for them. I had a case the other day, the woman who used to teach my girls music—”
“I’m sure Mr. Lane doesn’t want to hear about _her_,” interposed Ivy with more solicitude for Eric than civility to her mother. “Father, Mr. Lane’s secretary has gone away for a holiday, and I’m going in her place.”
The two sisters looked up with dawning interest; Lady Maitland glanced covertly at Eric; the judge nodded slowly to give himself time to think. Ivy had thrown out the announcement without inviting his approval or opinion. If she wanted either, it was not fair to speak in front of Eric, but he had not adjusted himself to the new conditions of her emancipation....
“How does that work in with Connie’s arrangements?,” asked Lady Maitland, when her husband’s silence began to look like discourtesy to Eric.
“Oh, she can get on without me for a month,” Ivy answered easily. “Don’t you think it will be fun?”
Eric wished that the subject had not been introduced, if it brought so much latent antagonism to the surface.
“She will be of very great assistance to me, if you’ll let her come,” he answered.
The judge reached out eagerly to take up the challenge:
“My dear Lane, _we_ don’t control Ivy’s movements.”
“But I shouldn’t dream of asking her to come against your wishes. We discussed this in America, before I engaged my present secretary.”
Lady Maitland was still visibly fluttered by finding Eric at her table and discovering him to be Ivy’s intimate friend. The wives of barristers and judges lived to as rigid a pattern as that of their husbands; and it was part of their guild-law to dislike the idea of any girl’s wandering off in the morning and returning at night without giving any account of herself or having any one to look after her. Mr. Lane, indeed, had a big enough position of his own to make him careful of his reputation; he seemed steady and sensible, agreeing with almost everything that she had said....