"You must do it for me, Steve."
"Bosh!" said Stephen. "That's just like you, Charlie. What an ass you
are!"
"Oh, but you _must_!" said Vera, in that tone which meant business, and
which also meant trouble for Stephen.
"_She's_ come," Stephen announced curtly, determined to put trouble off.
"Oh, has she?" cried Vera. "I thought you said she wouldn't."
"She hesitated, because she was afraid. But she's come after all,"
Stephen answered.
"What fun!" Vera murmured.
And ran off downstairs back again into the midst of the black coats and
the white toilettes and the holly-clad electricity of her Christmas
gathering.
II
The news that _she_ had come was all over the noisy house in a minute,
and it had the astonishing effect of producing what might roughly be
described as a silence. It stopped the reckless waltzing of the piano in
the drawing-room; it stopped the cackle incident to cork-pool in the
billiard-room; it even stopped a good deal of the whispering under the
Chinese lanterns beneath the stairs and in the alcove at the top of the
stairs. What it did not stop was the consumption of mince-pies and
claret-cup in the small breakfast-room; people mumbled about _her_
between munches.
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