Have you met him ?" Joan hadn't: except once on the stairs when, to avoid having to pass her, he had gone down again and out into the street.

From the doorstep she had caught sight of his disappearing coat-tails round the corner.
Yielding to impishness, she had run after him, and his expression of blank horror when, glancing over his shoulder, he found her walking abstractedly three yards behind him, had gladdened all her evening.
Joan recounted the episode--so far as the doorstep.
"He tried to be shy with me," said Mrs.Phillips, "but I wouldn't let him.

I chipped him out of it.

If he's going to write plays, as I told him, he will have to get over his fear of a petticoat." She offered her cheek, and Joan kissed it, somewhat gingerly.
"You won't mind Robert not wearing evening dress," she said.

"He never will if he can help it.