I hadn’t been inside the Carlton since the days before the “smash”—the days when I was a young lady of leisure, without an idea that I should presently be toiling in the grimy typists’ room at the Near Oriental from nine o’clock until six, wearing home-made delaine shirts, and trembling lest I might lose my hard-earned twenty-five shillings a week! The last time I’d been taken there to tea, after a matinée, by my brother Jack and Sydney Vandeleur, who had ordered roses of a very special pink to match the frock I’d worn then, and had sent a message to the band to play my favourite waltzes. Yes, as Jack said, Sydney would do anything for me, always. I expect Jack thought that the hundred pounds which saved his name came, as he suggested, from the Vandeleurs. Well, I couldn’t possibly “give away” the truth about the anomalous position his sister accepted in order to earn the money! Thank goodness, the Vandeleurs were at the other end of the world, and wouldn’t be home for a year, thought I. By then my time would be up, and they needn’t know of my make-believe “engagement”—except that it was “broken off”! “I telephoned for a table,” said Mr. Waters, as we left the ordinary work-a-day world of hurrying people and crowded, petrol-breathing motor-buses in the Haymarket, and entered the restaurant—warm, perfumed, bright with dainty clothes and pretty faces that smiled above the little tables. Ours was in a delightfully cosy corner, next to an empty table reserved for three persons. The decorations were of pink hothouse roses, almost the same as Sydney’s! How very different from that marble-topped table in the crowded “Den of Lyons” above which Miss Robinson, Smithie and little Miss Holt were probably even now gossiping excitedly over this event; but _how_ much rather I would have been with them! “Now, Miss Trant, what do you prefer for lunch?” (_My_ only variation of lunch for the last year having been from “Bovril and a baked apple” to “Poached-egg-on-toast, with a glass of hot milk.”) “I don’t mind at all.” “Then I’ll order.” And very delicious were the things he did order. Apparently even a machine liked perfect _bisque de homard_, and crisp whitebait—his one touch of nature, in fact. I longed for Cicely—who does love nice food, poor child!—to be there to help me enjoy this. In fact, I wished that Cicely and I could have had the lunch to our two gossiping selves. How we should have enjoyed all the luxuries, from the pretty glass to the freedom to chat, softly but unrestrainedly, about everyone we noticed in the place. I have heard it said that “Women would rather talk to other _women_ than to _men_, even when they would rather talk to a _man_ than to a _woman_.” I don’t think I’ve often met any single man I’d rather talk to than to a fairly amusing member of my own sex. You have to say most things twice to men, and then they don’t really understand....