"You'll come, of course, Dr. Anstice?" Iris asked the question one sunny afternoon as she prepared an iced drink for her visitor, after a strenuous game of tennis. "You do dance, don't you? For my part I could dance for ever."
"I do dance, yes," he said, taking the tumbler she held out to him, with a word of thanks. "But I don't think a ball is exactly in my line nowadays."
"It's not a ball," she said gaily. "Aunt Laura doesn't approve of oven a dance, seeing I'm not really 'out' till I've been presented next year--but Dad has been a perfect dear and says we can dance as long as we like down here where none of our London relations can see us!"
"Well, dance or ball, I suppose it will be a large affair?" He smiled at her, and she told herself that he grew younger every day.
"About a hundred and fifty, I suppose," she said lightly. "The room holds two hundred, but a crowded room is hateful--though an empty one would be almost worse. Anyhow, you are invited, first of all. Dinner is at seven, because we want to start dancing at nine. Will you come?"
Just for a second he hesitated. Then: "Of course I'll come," he said recklessly. "But you must promise me at least three dances, or I shall plead an urgent telephone call and fly in the middle!"
"Three!" Her grey eyes laughed into his. "That's rather greedy! Well--I'll give you two, and--perhaps--an extra."
"That's a promise," he said, and taking out a small notebook he made an entry therein. "And now, in view of coming frivolities, I must go and continue my day's work."
He rose and looked round the lovely old garden rather regretfully.
"How lucky you are to be able to spend the summer days in such a cool, shady spot as this! I wish you could see some of the stuffy cottages I go into round here--windows hermetically sealed, and even the fireplaces, when there are any, blocked up!"
She looked at him rather strangely.
"Do you know. Dr. Anstice," she said, irrelevantly, it seemed, "I don't believe you ought to be a doctor. Oh, I don't mean you aren't very clever--and kind--but somehow I don't believe you were meant to spend your days going in and out of stuffy cottages and attending to little village children with measles and whooping-cough!"