“Because you know about things, you’re clever, you’ve met everybody, you can understand people and write about them. Father’s in such a rut... Well, Johnnie came. That was when I wanted you to meet him. He wasn’t much of a success, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, I don’t know! He _argued_... and father always expects an enormous lot of deference from boys. Father said afterwards that Johnnie had drunk much too much for a young man and had become very impertinent. After that, of course, he wasn’t invited again, and mother kept nagging and trying to make me give up my job in his office. We had an awful row one day, just because I dined with Johnnie and came back rather late after the theatre. Father said I wasn’t to go out with him and that, as long as I lived at home, he expected me to obey him. I decided that I couldn’t live at home any longer. Johnnie found me these rooms....”
She coughed and took a sip of her soda-water.
“Yes. He made me see that the only thing to do was to leave home....”
Eric sat suddenly upright and then relaxed to his former attitude, noting with quick thankfulness that his movement had been unobserved.
“Well, you see, everybody in my department is being demobilized, so I wanted a job. I saw you had a new play—”
“Already cast,” Eric interrupted. “And we could cast the third footman five times over with people who’ve played respectable parts for years. There’s nothing there, Miss Maitland, I’m afraid. Even if there were, I’d sooner see you living with your parents again—”
“I saved a little money when I was with Sir Matthew. When that’s gone—”
“Oh, Gaymer would see you didn’t starve or get turned into the street,” said Eric with soft irony.
“Who told you we’d quarrelled?” she asked.
“You did. Miss Maitland, however unconventional you want to be, you can’t take money from a man. I’d most gladly lend or give you fifty pounds to-night, but you couldn’t possibly accept it. You see that?”
Eric shook his head in bewilderment, as he tried to determine whether she was naturally stupid or wholly unsophisticated.
Ivy hesitated before answering, and Eric felt that he was not going to hear the truth.
“I like him when he’s nice to me,” she answered indifferently.
“He likes me. He likes so many people,” she said, as carelessly as before.