Choose the One You'll Marry (6 page)

“Two or three days. Possibly four. And not until the end of the week. Surely it could be managed?”

“I don’t know—” began Ruth, and at that moment the time signal distractingly went, “Pip-pip!”

“Don’t take any notice of that,” said Angus soothingly. “Be a sport, Ruth, and come and help me.”

“Oh, it isn’t that I don’t
want
to,” cried Ruth. “It’s just that—I don’t quite know how I’m to ask for time off again. And for much longer this time. They’ll get the idea that I’m not interested in my job anymore.”

She heard him laugh and he said, “You’re sweet! I wish my staff were half as conscientious. May I take it that, if it could be arranged, you would like to come?”

“Well—well, yes—of course—” For a dizzy moment she visualized herself in London, as the valued friend and collaborator of Angus Everton. “But I think you must speak to Mr. Naylor yourself. I just can’t go in and start asking for favors all over again.”

“I’ll speak to him. You leave it to me. My middle name’s ‘persuasion,’ ” declared Angus Everton shamelessly. And as the telephone went dead in her hand, Ruth reflected that there was a good deal of truth in his last assertion.

Perhaps she ought not to have let him stampede her into a general agreement. Surely these things did not have to be discussed and arranged in three minutes, on the telephone? Only—he had such a persuasive way with him.

There passed, a little confusedly, through her mind a snatch from an old song—“But he so teased me, and he so pleased me
...
.”
And it seemed extraordinarily applicable to Angus Everton.

It now remained to be seen how far he could tease or please Mr. Naylor.

Whether Angus found it difficult to get his telephone connection again, or whether Mr. Naylor was not available, Ruth never knew. But it was certainly more than an hour before she heard anything more of the proposition, and she had almost resigned herself to the idea that Mr. Naylor had merely given an uncompromising no, with which Angus had had to be satisfied, when Miss Robbins came into the office and said, “You’re wanted in Mr. Naylor’s room. I’ll take over for you for the moment.”

“Oh—thank you.”

Up bounded Ruth’s spirits once more as, a little breathlessly, she patted her hair, pulled down the jacket of her trim suit and took herself off to the manager’s office.

As she entered she saw to her surprise that Mr. Naylor was not alone. Aunt Henrietta was sitting on the other side of the desk, looking extremely pleased with herself about something.

“Well, Miss Tadcaster—” Mr. Naylor’s half-jocular air of mingled approval and severity clearly indicated that he had been talked over on the subject of her absence “—it seems that we have to lend you to the television studio again. You’ll soon be quite famous around here. But don’t let them turn you into a star and take you away from us.”

“There isn’t much fear of that, sir.” Ruth smiled at him, and tried to give the impression of a very commonsense person who was not going to have her head turned by all this excitement, though secretly she longed to execute a little dance of triumph and joy.

“In the circumstances, it was a little difficult to say no to Mr. Everton—” Mr. Naylor began.

I expect it was,
thought Ruth amusedly.

B
u
t at this moment Aunt Henrietta—clearly under the impression that it was taking too long to tell the good news—broke in
:

“It’s all worked out perfectly, Ruth, dear. I heard only half an hour ago that the agents have managed to get me the furnished apartment I wanted. And so, of course, you’ll come and stay with me. Michael will drive us down on Thursday. We’ll take over the apartment—and that will be your home during the time you’re working for Mr. Everton. Nothing could be better!”

CHAPTER THREE

So
she was to stay
with Aunt Henrietta, after all, it seemed. And in circumstances that left her no choice in the matter. For a moment, unreasonable though it might be, Ruth had the impression of being jockeyed into something before she had time to decide what her own feelings were.

“It’s very—kind of you,” she said, and swallowed hard. “But perhaps—”

“Mr. Everton wants you at the studio on Friday, I understand,” went on Aunt Henrietta, who appeared to have discovered even more about the project than Ruth herself. “So, as we are driving down to London on Thursday, that will mean you are available in excellent time.”

“Perhaps—” Ruth insisted on getting her say in at last “—perhaps I should have a word with Mr. Everton myself. I’d like a little breathing space before the final arrangements are made. It a
l
l seems to have been settled somewhat arbitrarily.”

“Well, I happened to be in the office when Mr. Everton telephoned,” Aunt Henrietta explained, apparently without rancor. “And I actually had the letter from my agents in my hand.” She waved it, in token of her statement. “So, when I heard that you were being called to London for this television program, I was naturally delighted to think that I could have you as my very first guest.”

It was impossible not to be touched by this, particularly as the explanation was imparted with an air of the utmost good feeling and an almost ingenuous pleasure in the possibility of giving the invitation.

She means it,
thought Ruth contritely.
And here am I being almost ungracious, just because of dear mother’s rather unreasonable suspicions.

She smiled, a little doubtfully, from Aunt Henrietta to Mr. Naylor, w
h
o was listening to this with a somewhat indulgent air.

“Thank you, Aunt Henrietta. And thank you, too, Mr. Naylor, for letting me go. I’m just a bit bewildered—but of course delighted. Once I’ve had a word with Mr. Everton—”

“Here is his telephone number at the studio.” The efficient Mr. Naylor handed her a penciled note, torn from his desk pad. “He said he would be there for the next hour.”

“Do you mean I may telephone from here?” Ruth knew the staff were not encouraged to trespass too heavily on the hotel’s telephone account.”

“For once—yes. In the special circumstances.” Mr. Naylor cleared his throat and tried not to look as though he were enjoying all this very much. “But remember it’s a long-distance call and don’t spend too much time chatting.”

“No, sir, I won’t,” Ruth promised earnestly.

“And tell Mr. Everton that you’ll be staying with me at—” Aunt Henrietta consulted the letter from the agents once more “—14 Blessington Crescent, on the north side of Regent’s Park. He might like to come and see you there on Thursday evening, after we have returned. Though we may have to go out to eat, as we shall hardly have settled in by then.”

“Thank you, Aunt Henrietta,” Ruth said again, dazzled by this glimpse of a life that included Angus dropping in casually to discuss an unknown program in which she herself was to take part. And hardly able to believe that she was still Ruth Tadcaster, who usually lived a pleasant but uneventful sort of life, she went back to the reception office.

“Has anything happened?” inquired Margaret Robbins, looking up from her accounts. “You look—excited, somehow.”

“I am!” Ruth laughed and put her hands up to her cheeks, which felt unnaturally hot. “I’m to go to London on Thursday with Mrs. Curtis—you know, in room three on the first floor. And I’m to stay over the
w
eekend with her and appear on some television program of Mr. Everton’s.”

“Good heavens! Say that again.” Margaret abandoned any effort to make her accounts balance.

So Ruth said it again, in more detail, with some explanation about the telephone calls that had precipitated this exciting event.

“And Mr. Naylor is letting you go?”

“Yes.”

“And told you to make a long-distance call to London, to fix it all up?”

“Yes.”

“I tell you—it’s a thousand times better to work for a manager than a manageress!” Margaret spoke feelingly. “That manageress I was under at Altonbay would have died by inches rather than let someone else have so much fun. Now go and have your call, and I’ll hold the fort.”

“Thank you, Margaret. You’re an angel!” Ruth went to the telephone, trembling a little by now with sheer excitement.

This time there was no delay in making the connection, and in less than three minutes Angus’s charming voice sounded in her ear, with a note of exultation in it.

“All fixed up, you see! And if I understood Mr. Naylor correctly, it’s even been arranged for you to stay with someone from the hotel who takes a proprietorial interest in you.”

“Yes. My Aunt Henrietta, as a matter of fact.”

“You don’t say? Does anyone have an aunt called Henrietta in these days?” inquired Angus with delighted incredulity.

“She’s not really my aunt. She’s my mother’s—well, it’s too complicated to explain just now.” Ruth remembered suddenly that this was a long-distance call. “But I’m staying with her at Number 14 Blessington Crescent, on the north side of Regent’s Park—” carefully she checked off the details in her mind “—and if you would like it, Aunt Henrietta says you can come and see me there on Thursday evening, in order to—”

“I’d like it very much,” interrupted Angus, without, apparently, needing to be given any specific reason why he should come. “And I’ll give you all the particulars about the program then.”

“That’s what I—what she—thought. But—wait a minute!” Ruth was afraid he was going to hang up at this point and leave her as vague as ever about the general plan.

“I’m waiting,” he said. And something in his voice, as he uttered these words, gave her the most extraordinary and illogical sensation of happy excitement.

“It’s just—please, when exactly
is
this program? And how long will I have to be away in London? I can’t go home and just announce that I’m going off for an indefinite period.”

“Can’t you?” For some reason or other, he laughed a good deal at that. “Lots of girls would, I don’t doubt. But I suppose that’s half your attraction.”

“What is?” inquired Ruth, forgetting all about
long-distance
calls at the hotel’s expense, and even the necessity of getting a clear statement with regard to her length of stay in London.

“Oh—I don’t know—the sort of sane and ordered way you cope with life, I think.” He was smiling, she could hear from the tone of his voice. “You don’t rush around pursuing your own plan of the moment, regardless of anything or anyone else. I suppose,” he added, on a note of genuine curiosity, “you always tell your mother where you’re going for an evening?”

“Usually. Why not? It interests her to know, and it also simplifies supper arrangements.”

Angus laughed and said, almost casually it seemed to her, “I adore you.”

And if the exchange had not most insensitively added, “Pip-pip,” at that moment, indicating that more coins must be deposited to continue the conversation, Ruth would have forgotten all about the exact purpose of this call.

“W-well, certainly she will want to know when to expect me back from London,” Ruth stated firmly, though she found it oddly difficult to keep her voice entirely steady.

“The program is on Monday evening, and I want you to come out with me afterward. So don’t insist on making plans to dash back by the night train,” Angus said, in that half teasing, half peremptory way of his.

“I’ll arrange to travel back on Tuesday,” Ruth promised willingly. And she made the rapid decision that, if Mr. Naylor were supposing that she would be back on duty on Tuesday morning, he had, as Susannah would have said, “another think coming to him.”

“All settled to your satisfaction?” Angus wanted to know.

“Very much so. And thank you
so
much.”

“For what?”

“For thinking of me in connection with your program, I suppose.”

“You’re not a difficult person to think of,” he told her enigmatically. Then he hung up, leaving her wondering just exactly what he had meant by that.

It was very nearly time for Ruth to leave by now. But having rapidly cleared up her work for the day, she went and reported to Mr. Naylor the result of her telephone conversation with Angus. He took the bit about her being away until Wednesday very well, only remarking, on principle, that he hoped this would not happen too often—particularly in the busy part of the year.

Ruth said, very truly, that it was unlikely to do so. Then she went in search of Aunt Henrietta, whom she found in the lounge, having a late tea with her nephew.

“Come along, dear, and join us,” she cried, on seeing Ruth. And Michael Harling got up to get a chair for her.

But Ruth knew it was not considered quite the thing for the staff to mix with the guests. So she smiled and said, “Please don’t disturb yourself. And thank you—but I’m really on my way home. I just wanted to tell you, Aunt Henrietta, that everything is fixed up. Angus—Mr. Everton—wants me to stay over until Tuesday morning, if that is all right with you.”

“Perfectly all right, my dear. I’ve just been telling Michael the exciting news.”

Michael smiled faintly, but looked as though the exciting news had not exactly changed life for him.

“I hear you’re going to drive down with us on Thursday,” he said courteously.

“If you will be so kind as to take me.”

“Of course,” he said, a trifle formally.

Then Aunt Henrietta remarked that that was splendid, and Ruth bade them goodbye, and went home with the most exciting budget of news she had yet presented to her family.

Fortunately they were all at home, since she was later than usual, and it was therefore necessary to tell her story only once, though Susannah made so many interruptions, and asked for so much to be confirmed and repeated, that in the end Ruth felt she had told it twice.

“Good for you!” said Leonard, at the end of the recital. “You ought to have a splendid time.”

Susannah hopped up and down excitedly and cried, “What did I say? I know you’ll be famous! I know you’ll be famous!”

“Well, don’t let all this turn your head,” her father warned her, but with an air of paternal satisfaction impossible to conceal entirely.

Her mother merely looked at her thoughtfully and said, “So you’ll be staying with Aunt Henrietta, after all.”

“Yes—I know. But I don’t know what else I could do, mother. She was so kind and hospitable about it. There wouldn’t have been any way of refusing.”

“No. I suppose not.”

“But why should you want to refuse, anyway?” Leonard, who had not heard anything about his mother’s doubts, looked astonished.

Ruth and Mrs. Tadcaster were both silent, realizing that Susannah’s ears were almost trembling on stalks.

But Mr. Tadcaster said, with ill-timed jocularity, “Your mother isn’t sure she is Aunt Henrietta at all. She thinks she may be an international crook, after our canteen of cutlery.”

“A crook?” repeated Susannah, on a note of such shocked rapture that everyone realized they were laying up embarrassment and trouble for themselves unless a good recovery were made.

“Don’t send for the police. That’s just my idea of a joke,” her father said hastily.

“Mother didn’t look as though it was a joke,” Susannah remarked shrewdly.

“She knew it was meant for one, but she didn’t think it worth laughing at,” her father explained, which fortunately diverted Susannah’s thoughts.

“I read an article the other day that said that a wife should always laugh at her husband’s jokes,” she remarked, going off on a useful tangent. “It said it was one of the ways of keeping him.”

“Well, well—” Her father looked mildly surprised by this sidelight on matrimonial wisdom, but did not offer to comment on it. And the subject of Aunt Henrietta’s invitation was allowed to lapse, in favor of the more pressing matter of supper.

During the day or two
before she left on her adventurous trip, Ruth was a good deal occupied putting her office affairs in apple-pie order, so that Margaret Robbins and Minnie Donaldson could manage easily while she was away. In spite of this, however, she found time to rush out and buy herself a black taffeta cocktail dress with a dashing gold and green sash. In this she felt she would not disgrace Angus when he took her out to supper after the show.

She didn’t want to disgrace Aunt Henrietta or Michael Harling, either, of course. But that was by the way.

On Thursday morning an enthusiastically interested family prepared to say goodbye to her. Aunt Henrietta and her nephew were to pick up Ruth from the house. But long before they had any likelihood of appearing, Mrs. Tadcaster drew her elder daughter aside, while the rest of the family were occupied elsewhere, and said, “I expect you spent most of your spare money on that black dress, dear. So I want you to take this ten pounds with you, as emergency money, just in case you suddenly found you preferred to go to a hotel.”

“Oh, mother, how sweet of you! But I don’t think—”

“No, nor do I. But I prefer to be certain where my children are concerned.” Mrs.
Tadcaster
set her mouth obstinately. “And you needn’t tell your father. Men don’t
understand these things. I’ve saved the money from the housekeeping, so it’s my own affair entirely.”

“Thank you most awfully.” Ruth hugged her mother. “I’m sure it won’t be needed. But if you will feel more comfortable knowing
I
have it—”

“I shall feel more comfortable,” said her mother unequivocally. Then the others came in to breakfast, and it seemed almost no time before the sound of a car drawing up outside the house sent Susannah flying to the window.

“Here they are!” she cried. “Oh, I
wish
I were going too.”

“I wish you were, pet,” declared Ruth, as she kissed her little sister goodbye. “But I’ll soon be back, with all the news.”

Leonard carried her case out to the gate, where Michael Harling stood beside the long gray car, and Aunt Henrietta was discernible, waving and smiling from the backseat.

While the luggage was stowed away in the trunk, the family clustered around to repeat their goodbyes, and Mrs. Tadcaster said to Aunt Henrietta, “It’s a long drive for you. I hope you won’t find it too much.”

“I love it,” was the enthusiastic reply. “No drive can be too long for me. I’m never carsick or anything of that sort.”

“No?” Even as Ruth was getting into the seat beside Michael, she heard the odd note in her mother’s voice and glanced back. “You always used to be, you know,” Mrs. Tadcaster said slowly. “Don’t you remember? That was why, when you came to visit us, you always traveled by train, even though it was an inconvenient journey.”

Ruth thought that, in the flurry of departure, she was perhaps the only one who heard that slight catch of Aunt Henrietta’s breath. Then there was a gay li
t
tle laugh from the backseat and Aunt Henrietta said lightly, “Yes—of course. But cars were a good deal less smooth and steady in action in those days. It’s a long time ago, my dear.”

“Everyone settled?” inquired Michael firmly at this point.

“Yes, yes. Let’s be going. We have a long journey in front of us, as Eileen says.” For the first time since she had known her, Ruth thought she detected a note of nervous impatience in Aunt Henrietta’s voice.

“
I’m all right, if the luggage is in.” Ruth managed to smile composedly at Michael, though she felt shaken by the odd little conversation that had just taken place.

“
Goodbye, goodbye,” cried Susannah, with as much drama as if she were seeing someone off on a three months’ voyage into the unknown. And as the rest of the family stood back and waved, the car started, gathered speed, swept down the road and around the corner, out of sight of home.

At first Ruth felt disinclined to talk. She was still very much under the impression of her mother’s question and Aunt Henrietta’s not very satisfactory reply. Also, she was not sufficiently at ease with Michael Harling to enter into gay and easy conversation.

If it had been Angus, now!

But once they had left Castlemore behind, and were out on the open road, the sense of being on holiday superseded all other feeling, and with a sigh of contentment she relaxed in her seat and smiled, for sheer pleasure in the bright September day, and the knowledge that she was speeding toward London—and Angus.

“Feeling happy?” Her companion gave her an unexpectedly amused and indulgent glance.

“I am, as a matter of fact. I just can’t believe I’m really on my way to London. A few days ago I couldn’t have imagined such a trip.”

“That comes of being a success,” he told her, with a teasing note in his voice, which she had not heard there before.

“A success?”

“Yes, of course. Even Angus Everton wouldn’t make you this offer just for the sake of your blue eyes. He’s a good businessman.”

She didn’t much like that “even Angus Everton.” So she said a little coolly, “He has been a very good friend to me.”

“I daresay. But even friendship isn’t a passport to his television program, I’m sure. You can congratulate yourself on having struck just the note he needed.”

That was such a pleasant thought that she forgave him the slight criticism of Angus that his tone had implied. And presently she asked where he lived in London. “Are you near where your aunt is going to stay?”

“Oh, didn’t you know? I’m sharing the apartment with her,” he said. “Just at the time Aunt Henrietta came to London I had to give up the furnished apartment where I was. She was very keen on our having a place together, at any rate for a time. And that’s why she asked the agents to find a fairly large apartment.

“Then—you mean—we’ll
all
be living in this apartment near Regent’s Park?”

“Yes.” He gave her an amused glance. “Do you mind?”

“No! No, of course not.”

But, in an odd way, she did. She found Michael Harling a difficult person to place, in her scale of likes and dislikes, and she could not quite get over the feeling that he was, in a sense, her employer. And a much less lenient employer than Mr. Naylor, she felt sure.

“You haven’t quite forgiven me for what happened that first day, have you?” he said coolly at that moment, and he gave her another of those amused glances.

“Oh, that isn’t true!” She blushed slightly. “I—I haven’t the least resentment about it.”

“Not resentment, exactly. But something that has made you decide not to like me.”

She was astonished and put out, so that she said with less than her usual tact, “I don’t dislike you.”

“Rather negative praise,” he remarked reflectively.

“Mr. Harling, one doesn’t
have
to like an employer one hardly knows.”

“An employer?” He looked genuinely surprised. “Is that how you think of me? I was supposing we were more or less cousins.”

“
Cousins?”
In her wildest moments of fantasy, she had not thought of Mr. Harling as a cousin.

“Well, we have Aunt Henrietta in common,” he pointed out, and this time his glance had a malicious sparkle of amusement that made her laugh a little reluctantly.

“Aunt Henrietta is really my mother’s aunt,” she said demurely.

“You horrid child! Are you trying to relegate me to the role of uncle?” he inquired.

“Oh, no.”

She supposed he was a good deal too young for that and, unknowingly, looked at him with such an air of speculation that he said obligingly, “I’m thirty-one.”

“I—I beg your pardon.”

“Not at all.” He evidently enjoyed her discomfiture. Perhaps in revenge for the remark about Aunt Henrietta being her mother’s aunt. “You, I suppose, are about ten years younger?”

“Nine,” she said, and started to do some mental arithmetic on the subject of ages in general.

“Then your mother must have been a good deal younger than Aunt Henrietta?” she said presently.

“Not necessarily. But in point of fact, she was.”

It struck Ruth then that, although their conversation had been conducted in quite quiet tones, it was surprising that Aunt Henrietta had not joined in. And then, turning around, she saw that she was asleep.

Like most people, Aunt Henrietta looked curiously defenseless asleep. She lay back in the corner of the car, looking older than she did when her bright, laughing eyes were open, and there was something oddly pathetic in the unexpected downward droop of her mouth.

“She’s asleep,” Ruth said softly to Michael Harling.

“Is she? That’s just as well. It was an early start for her. She doesn’t usually get up until around nine.”

“I see. Has she—I mean, she hasn’t been in this country for more than a few weeks, has she?”

“About a couple of months.”

“And before then, how—how long was it since you’d seen her?” Ruth asked, as carelessly as she could.

“Oh, more than twenty years. She married and went to New Zealand, you know. Her husband died about a year after they were both there, leaving her pretty badly off, I think.”

“And yet she—she seems very comfortably provided for now.”

“Yes,” he agreed, without obvious signs of curiosity.

“How did the—change in her circumstances come about, then? Did she have some sort of—business success herself?”

“I don’t really know. There was a long gap when we heard no news of her. For the last twelve years or so of my mother’s lifetime I don’t think we had a letter. Then, about a year ago, she wrote to my old home address, and the letter was forwarded to me. I had to write and explain that my mother had died less than a year ago. And presently Aunt Henrietta decided to come home. She wanted to see me. And she wanted to see your mother—and her family.”

“Yes. She—seemed to retain a strong affection for the people she hadn’t seen for so long.”

“I suppose one does when one hasn’t many people to care about,” he said. And somehow, after that, Ruth found it difficult to continue the catechism about Aunt Henrietta, even though she had managed to disguise it as no more than friendly interest.

It was a pleasant, uneventful journey for the rest of the way. Aunt Henrietta slept for quite a while longer and woke up obviously refreshed. If she retained any uncomfortable recollection of Mrs. Tadcaster’s last questions, she showed no signs of this, and she was very gay and good company during lunch, which they had at a famous coaching inn, where “atmosphere” was not made an excuse for bad food.

By the time they reached London, it was the middle of the afternoon, and they drove straight to the house agents. To Ruth, everything was novel and interesting, and the occasional glimpses of well-known places drew exclamations of pleasure from her, which obviously both amused and pleased her companions.

With the keys in their posses
s
ion, they then drove to Blessington Crescent, where the apartment proved to be a much more elegant and luxurious place than Ruth had ever expected. It was situated on the first floor of what once must have been a Regency mansion, and the rooms were large and most beautifully proportioned.

From the back, where Ruth’s room was situated, there was a delightful view across the park. And as she stood watching the late-afternoon sunlight flickering on grass and trees, she felt enchanted with her whole situation, and wondered how she could ever have allowed idle suspicions to cast a cloud on her enjoyment of this wonderful visit.

The fact that the meeting with Angus was now only a matter of hours away contributed somewhat to this state of mind. And in addition there was the discovery—satisfactory to all three of them—that with the apartment went the services of the nearest thing to an old retainer that one was likely to find in the middle twentieth century.

A rather prim, gray-haired, immensely efficient factotum, answering to the name of Martin, had awaited them on arrival.

“No, madam,” she had said, in answer to Aunt Henrietta’s inquiries. “I don’t sleep in.
I
live about five minutes’
wal
k away.” Her air suggested that she hardly slept at all in the service of her employers. “
I
got in all the basic supplies, madam. And tomorrow perhaps you’ll let me know anything special you would like me to get. Unless you prefer to do the shopping yourself.”

Aunt Henrietta said hastily that she was sure Martin could do this much better than she could. A view to which Martin obviously subscribed, while being much too polite to say so.

“Life’s going to be wonderfully easy with that treasure around,” Aunt Henrietta confided to Ruth, before she went to her room. And with those words, an added sense of satisfaction and well-being seemed to pervade the place.

Angus telephoned half an hour later, to ask when he might make his appearance. And after consultation with Aunt Henrietta, Ruth suggested that he should come to the apartment just before seven.

“Aunt Henrietta says we can have a drink here and then go out somewhere to dinner,” Ruth explained.

“Don’t I get you to myself?” Angus inquired, in a tone that made Ruth’s heart miss a beat.

But she remembered that she was here as Aunt Henrietta’s guest, and that her company was supposed to give pleasure to the older woman. So she said firmly, “Not this evening. Another time perhaps.”

“Another time for certain,” he corrected before he hung up, and Ruth was left standing there smiling, with the receiver in her hand.

At seven o’clock precisely Angus presented himself, looking very distinguished and charming in his dinner jacket. And although he didn’t actually kiss Ruth on arrival, she had the impression that he might well have done so if Aunt Henrietta and Michael had not come in almost immediately.