“Ah, now I remember,” she said. “He told me that if he couldn’t get here by half-past ten, he wouldn’t come at all, but would just send the car for us. What time is it now?” “Eleven,” said I. “Oh, come quick, then,” said she. “We’ve missed half an hour already.” Lord Marrible turned to Mrs. Withers. “Well, you and I must console ourselves with supper,” he said, “as Robbie hasn’t asked us.” It was all very well for Agnes to say that we would go quickly, but Mrs. Withers just clung. “But wouldn’t he let me come too?” she said. “Mayn’t I drop you at his door, Miss Lockett, and I would wait while you asked him if I might come in?” Agnes’s face dimpled again. “My dear, if it were possible!” she said. “But with Robbie, however intimately you know him, you can’t quite do that. You agree with me, Lord Marrible, I know. But if--if he gives me a copy of the Cologne sonnets, or lets me make one, you may guess to whom I will show it, unless he absolutely forbids me to show it to anybody. How tiresome it is that you don’t know him!” Mrs. Withers’s pearl trembled again. “Or if lunch on Sunday won’t suit Mr. Oriole,” she said, “I have got a few people to dinner on Tuesday and Wednesday, and if you would bring him then I should be more than charmed.” She remembered that her hospitable table was crammed on Wednesday, but there were two or three people who did not matter, and she could easily tell them that she expected them not that Wednesday but the next.... “Or if he would ring me up and suggest any time,” she added. Agnes laughed again. “Too kind of you,” she said, “and how rude of me to laugh! I laughed at the idea of Robbie telephoning. He can’t bear any modern invention.” “But he is an airman, isn’t he?” asked Mrs. Withers. Never have I admired the quickness and felicity of the female mind more than at that critical moment which would have caused any mere man to stumble and bungle, and leave an unconvincing impression. There was not even the “perceptible pause” before Agnes answered. “Ah, but Robbie says that flying is the effort to recapture bird-life of a million years ago,” she said. “Birds and angels fly; it is not a modern discovery, but a celestial and ancient secret now being learned by us in our clumsy way. Robbie is lyrical about flying. But what bird or angel ever telephoned? Come, Mr. Goodenough, let us find that car.” “I forget how he reconciles himself to motoring,” I said. I did not want to put Agnes in a fix, but only to delight my soul with another instance of feminine alacrity. “He doesn’t,” said she brightly. “But then you have got to get to places quickly, and you can’t fly through the streets of London yet.” “He sounds too marvellous,” said Mrs. Withers ecstatically. “Sunday, Tuesday or Wednesday then. Any of them.”