Part 34

“Dear boy!” said Dolly reflectively.

“I hate sentiment,” said I. “Here’s a long one. Who wrote--?”

“Oh, you mustn’t look at that--not at that, above all!”

“Why above all?” I asked with some severity.

Dolly smiled; then she observed in a soothing tone.

“Perhaps it won’t be ‘above all’ when you’ve written yours, Mr. Carter.”

“By the way,” I said carelessly, “I suppose Archie sees all of them?”

“He has never asked to see them,” answered Lady Mickleham.

The reply seemed satisfactory; of course, Archie had only to ask. I took a clean quill and prepared to write.

“You promise to be sincere, you know,” Dolly reminded me.

I laid down my pen.

“Impossible!” said I firmly.

“O, but why, Mr. Carter?”

“There would be an end of our friendship.”

“Do you think as badly of me as all that?” asked Dolly with a rueful air.

I leant back in my chair, and looked at Dolly. She looked at me. She smiled. I may have smiled.

“Yes,” said I.

“Then you needn’t write it quite all down,” said Dolly.

“I am obliged,” said I, taking up my pen.

“You mustn’t say what isn’t true, but you needn’t say everything that is--that might be--true,” explained Dolly.

This, again, seemed satisfactory. I began to write, Dolly sitting opposite me with her elbows on the table, and watching me.

After ten minutes’ steady work, which included several pauses for reflection, I threw down the pen, leant back in my chair, and lit a cigarette.

“Now read it,” said Dolly, her chin in her hands and her eyes fixed on me.

“It is, on the whole,” I observed, “complimentary.”

“No, really,” said Dolly. “Yet you promised to be sincere.”

“You would not have had me disagreeable?” I asked.

“That’s a different thing,” said Dolly. “Read it, please.”

“Lady Mickleham,” I read, “is usually accounted a person of considerable attractions. She is widely popular, and more than one woman has been known to like her.”