'I'll ask Marjory,' I laughed.
I leaned across the broad shoulders of Aunt Agatha and whispered in Marjory's ear. She was still talking to her special admirer, Mr. Lovelace.
'Who's Tommy?' I asked, low enough, I thought, not to be heard by anyone else.
Mr. Lovelace, however, must have heard, because I could see him blush even though I wasn't looking at him. Marjory blushed too, and after a quick, shy glance in his direction, frowned on me severely.
'Oh,' I said, without thinking, 'is Mr. Lovelace called Tommy, too?'
Marjory looked horrified, and they both blushed again. I guess she called him Tommy when they were alone, and they both felt as if she had just been caught in the act. But Mr. Lovelace, having conquered his blushes, came gallantly to the rescue.
'Yes,' he said laughingly, 'I confess to being called Tommy.'
'Oh,' I said, trying to make up for what I had done. 'Being called anything ending in "Y" is a sure sign of popularity, isn't it?'
I think Marjory felt that I was depriving her of her last few minutes' conversation with her young man. She looked at her watch, which is always a sure sign with a woman that someone is in the way.
'We're due to start in five minutes,' she said.
They were ordinary enough words, but they gave me a cold, streaky pain down the back right away. Not until then had I realised what the moment of departure would be like. I suddenly felt that I
