“You know, you're wonderful!” he said, regarding Sally with unconcealed admiration.
“Now we'll go and hunt up Fillmore,” she said. “But there's no need to hurry, of course, really. We'll go for a walk first, and then call at the Astor and make him give us lunch. I want to hear all about you. I've heard something already. I met your cousin, Mr. Carmyle. He was on the train coming from Detroit. Did you know that he was in America?”
“No, I've--er--rather lost touch with the Family.”
“So I gathered from Mr. Carmyle. And I feel hideously responsible. It was all through me that all this happened.”
“Of course it was. I made you what you are to-day--I hope I'm satisfied--I dragged and dragged you down until the soul within you died, so to speak. I know perfectly well that you wouldn't have dreamed of savaging the Family as you seem to have done if it hadn't been for what I said to you at Roville. Ginger, tell me, what did happen? I'm dying to know. Mr. Carmyle said you insulted your uncle!”
“Donald. Yes, we did have a bit of a scrap, as a matter of fact. He made me go out to dinner with him and we--er--sort of disagreed. To start with, he wanted me to apologize to old Scrymgeour, and I rather gave it a miss.”
“Oh, ah!” Ginger blushed. “And then there was all that about the soup, you know.”
“How do you mean, 'all that about the soup'? What about the soup? What soup?”
“Well, things sort of hotted up a bit when the soup arrived.”
“I mean, the trouble seemed to start, as it were, when the waiter had finished ladling out the mulligatawny. Thick soup, you know.”
“I know mulligatawny is a thick soup. Yes?”
“Well, my old uncle--I'm not blaming him, don't you know--more his misfortune than his fault--I can see that now--but he's got a heavy moustache. Like a walrus, rather, and he's a bit apt to inhale the stuff through it. And I--well, I asked him not to. It was just a suggestion, you know. He cut up fairly rough, and by the time the fish came round we were more or less down on the mat chewing holes in one another. My fault, probably. I wasn't feeling particularly well-disposed towards the Family that night. I'd just had a talk with Bruce--my cousin, you know--in Piccadilly, and that had rather got the wind up me. Bruce always seems to get on my nerves a bit somehow and--Uncle Donald asking me to dinner and all that. By the way, did you get the books?”