The worst of it was that Angela Nuneaton had heard me say that I was going to take lessons, and the little man said two lessons did the trick. So she went about telling everybody (she always told everybody everything) that I had taken lessons and everybody must be very careful what they thought about while I was present. A day or two later I got a nasty shock when I met Georgina Grosheim at the theatre, having quite accidentally booked seats next to hers. She just looked round to see who it was, and then bolted from the theatre, although it was only half-way through the first reel. Of course I couldn’t understand it at all at first; and when I dropped in to supper afterwards at Lady Humbledon’s, neither of the men next to me spoke a word to me, and the girl on the other side of the table looked away and blushed whenever she met my eyes. She came up to me afterwards, and said, “Oh, Lady Porstock, you must really excuse me for thinking such dreadful things at dinner, but I couldn’t help it, I really couldn’t!” Then of course I saw what was happening, and heard that she had heard from Angela; so I assured her that I’d no notion what she was thinking about during supper. To which she replied, “Oh, Lady Porstock, it’s so sweet of you to say that,” and went out of the room—I could see at once that she didn’t believe me. I don’t think it would have been so bad, only Archie Lock, who always had a terribly misplaced sense of humour (he paid for it, poor fellow, when his father disinherited him), saw his chance of scoring off us all, and proceeded to make it known that he had been to Griggs (whom he’d never met in his life), and had taken lessons; he added that Griggs had told him he had a strong natural gift for mind-reading. Then he used to go about, like a silly ass, starting with surprise when he passed some casual stranger in the street, and saying “How awful!” He met Georgina Grosheim before she had heard about this, and he greeted her with “Oh, Georgina, don’t think that!” upon which (he used to declare) she made a dash for the very fastest part of the moving platform and was whirled away down Bond Street. I met him at a dinner-party, or rather I sat about four places off him, and I noticed the fool caught my eye several times and smiled at me, but never realized what he was up to until he came to me afterwards and said, “Thanks so much, Opal, that was a ripping conversation we had at dinner, wasn’t it?” At which almost everybody present looked daggers at us, and the man who had been sitting next to me turned scarlet.