and improve her wind. Joan watched her spreading the butter a quarter of
an inch thick upon her toast and restrained with difficulty the impulse
to take it away from her. And her clothes! Joan had seen guys carried
through the streets on the fifth of November that were less obtrusive.

She remembered, as she was taking her leave, what she had come for: which
was to invite Joan to dinner on the following Friday.

"It's just a homely affair," she explained. She had recovered her form
and was now quite the lady again. "Two other guests beside yourself: a
Mr. Airlie--I am sure you will like him. He's so dilletanty--and Mr.
McKean. He's the young man upstairs. Have you met him?"

Joan hadn't: except once on the stairs when, to avoid having to pass her,
he had gone down again and out into the street. From the doorstep she
had caught sight of his disappearing coat-tails round the corner.
Yielding to impishness, she had run after him, and his expression of
blank horror when, glancing over his shoulder, he found her walking
abstractedly three yards behind him, had gladdened all her evening.

Joan recounted the episode--so far as the doorstep.

"He tried to be shy with me," said Mrs. Phillips, "but I wouldn't let
him. I chipped him out of it. If he's going to write plays, as I told
him, he will have to get over his fear of a petticoat."

She offered her cheek, and Joan kissed it, somewhat gingerly.

"You won't mind Robert not wearing evening dress," she said. "He never
will if he can help it. I shall just slip on a semi-toilette myself."