'Won't your mother be disappointed?' Edith asked. 'My dear Edith, you can safely leave that to me. Of course she'll be disappointed, but you can go round and see her, and speak to her nicely and tell her that after all we can't come because we've got another engagement.' 'And am I to tell her it's a subsequent one? Otherwise she'll wonder we didn't mention it before.' 'Don't be in a hurry, dear. Don't rush things; remember... she's my mother. Perhaps to you, Edith, it seems a rather old-fashioned idea, and I daresay you think it's rot, but to me there's something very sacred about the idea of a mother.' He lit a cigarette and looked in the glass. 'Yes, dear. Then, don't you think we really ought to have kept our promise to dine with her? She'll probably be looking forward to it. I daresay she's asked one or two people she thinks we like, to meet us.' 'Circumstances alter cases, Edith. If it comes to that, Aylmer Ross has got two or three people coming to dine with him whom he thinks we might like. He said so himself. That's why he's asked us.' 'Yes, but he can't have asked them on purpose, Bruce, because, you see, we didn't know him on Thursday.' 'Well, why should he have asked them on purpose? _How_ you argue! _How_ you go on! It really seems to me you're getting absurdly exacting and touchy, Edith dear. I believe all those flowers from the embassy have positively turned your head. _Why_ should he have asked them on purpose. You admit yourself that we didn't even know the man last Thursday, and yet you expect--' Bruce stopped. He had got into a slight tangle. Edith looked away. She had not quite mastered the art of the inward smile. 'Far better, in my opinion,' continued Bruce, walking up and down the room.--'Now, don't interrupt me in your impulsive way, but hear me out--it would be far more kind and sensible in every way for you to sit right down at that little writing-table, take out your stylographic pen and write and tell my mother that I have a bad attack of influenza.... Yes; one should always be considerate to one's parents. I suppose it really is the way I was brought up that makes me feel this so keenly,' he explained. Edith sat down to the writing-table. 'How bad is your influenza?' 'Oh, not very bad; because it would worry her: a slight attack.--Stop! Not so very slight--we must let her think it's the ordinary kind, and then she'll think it's catching and she won't come here for a few days, and that will avoid our going into the matter in detail, which would be better.' 'If she thinks it's catching, dear, she'll want Archie and Dilly, and Miss Townsend and Nurse to go and stay with her in South Kensington, and that will be quite an affair.'