“Still the best thing to happen to you.” Edwin interrupted the awkward moment, his coffee cup held an inch from his lips. “Even if she did teach you to drive.” Catherine smiled, her cheeks swelling, and she looked down.

A familiar vibration in his breast pocket took his attention from the happy reminiscing to his pocketwatch, heeding something important he must apply his attention was looming.

“Ah, and I was just sketching you without a frown,” the commissioned artist sighed, pencil busy.

"Not me." Brinley answered. He shook his head. "Lovely story." He liked the tale of how they met. Romantic. Homely. Even Brin's boss approved. Brin laughed with them about the joke. Polite. Duty interrupted. Brin checked his own watch. "Brought forward Sir. We should be thinking of leaving." He nodded apologetically to Mr and Mrs Pepper. Brin returned his coffee cup to Mrs Pepper. Sad he would not drink another or eat more of her lovely biscuits. If the Minister's portrait was good he would book his own.

“Already?” Catherine Pepper asked, with the accidental tone of an exasperated mother. Her husband blinked quickly at her and chuckled. “I mean, of course, duty calls.” Mrs Pepper was taking the status of their visitor a little too seriously in his opinion.

“We always knew it would be sporadic,” Octavius followed up smoothly, shrugging. He set his pencil down beside sketches. “But at this rate it’ll be a long time before you can hang my work on a wall.” Minister or not, Edwin was still an old friend who he could be honest with. He figured Abbott had caught up with that from their conversations earlier.

“I’ll expect an owl from one of your secretaries.” Edwin didn’t owl back these days, far too important for writing his own owls. “Don’t go working on your frown lines.”

End