CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXHenry rang up at a quarter past nine, a time nicely calculated to ensure that Marion would have left the flat. Hilary stopped in the middle of making her bed, put the receiver to her ear, and stuck out her tongue at the mouthpiece.
“Hilary——” said Henry at the other end of the line.
“Thank goodness it’s you!” said Hilary.
“Why shouldn’t it be me? Who did you expect it to be?”
Hilary giggled.
“Darling, you don’t know how nice it was to hear your voice—I mean a man’s voice. The telephone has been too, too exclusively female and completely incessant this morning.”
“What about?”
“First of all Aunt Emmeline’s Eliza rang up to say she was in bed with a chill—Aunt Emmeline, not Eliza, she doesn’t hold with chills—and she was selling at a stall for the Infant Bib Society,
