Edith sat down in the window seat between Dodo and Jack, who shied away from the reek of her pipe, which an impartial breeze, coming in at the window, wafted this way and that.
"But who's a-deniging of it, Saireh Gamp?" she asked. "The snob's main object is not actually having the King or the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury to dinner; what he cares about is that other people should know that he has done so. Snobbishness isn't running after the great ones of the earth, but letting the little ones know you have caught the great ones."
"You hopeless women!" said Jack.
Dodo shook her head.
"He can't understand," she said, "for with all his virtues Jack isn't a snob at all, and he misses a great deal of pleasure. We all want to associate with our superiors in any line. It is more fun having notable people about than nonentities. When it comes to friends it is a different thing, and I would throw over the whole Almanack of Grotha for the sake of a friend – "
Jack turned his eyes heavenwards.
"What an angel!" he said. "Was ever such nobility and unworldliness embodied in a human form? What have I done to deserve – "
Dodo interrupted.
"And we like other people to know it," she said. "Poor Jack is a lusus naturæ; he is swamped by the normal. You must yield, darling."
Jack made an awful face as the smoke from Edith's pipe blew across him, and got up.
"I yield to those deathly fumes," he said.
Dodo's guests arrived spasmodically during the afternoon. A couple of motors went backwards and forwards between the station and the house, meeting all probable trains, sometimes returning with one occupant, sometimes with three or four, for nobody had happened to say what time he was arriving. About five an aeroplane alighted in the park, bearing Hugh Graves as pilot, and his wife Nadine as passenger, and while Dodo, taking her daughter's place, succeeded in getting Hugh to take her up for a short flight, Prince and Princess Albert arrived in a cab with Nadine's maid, having somehow managed to miss the motor. Jack was out fishing at the time, and Prince Albert expressed over and over again his surprise at the informality of their reception. He was a slow, stout, stupid man of sixty, and in ten years' time would no doubt be slower, stouter, stupider and seventy. He had a miraculous digestion, a huge appetite for sleep, and a moderate acquaintance with the English language. They spent four months of the year in England in order to get away from their terrible little Court at Allenstein, and with a view to economy, passed most of those months in sponging on well-to-do acquaintances.
"Also this is very strange," he said slowly. "Where is Lady Chesterford? Where is Lord Chesterford? Where are our hosts? Where is tea?"
Princess Albert, brisk and buxom and pleasant and pleased, waddled through the house into the garden, where she met Nadine, leaving her husband to follow still wondering at the strangeness of it all. She talked voluble, effective English in a guttural manner.
"So screaming!" she said. "Nobody here, neither dearest Dodo nor her husband to receive us, so when they come we will receive them. Where is she?"
Nadine pointed to an aeroplane that was flying low over the house.
"She's there just now," she said.
"Flying? Albert, Dodo is flying. Is that not courageous of her?"
"But Lady Chesterford should have been here to receive us," said he. "It is very strange, but we will have tea. And where is my evening paper? I shall have left it in the cab, and it must be fetched. You there: I wish my evening paper."
The person he had thus addressed, who resembled an aged but extremely respectable butler, took off his hat, and Princess Albert instantly recognised him.
"But it is dear Mr. Vane," she said. "How pleasant! Is it not amusing that we should arrive when Dodo is flying and Lord Chesterford is fishing? So awkward for them, poor things, when they find we are here."
Prince Albert looked at him with some mistrust, which gradually cleared.
"I remember you!" he said. "You are Lady Chesterford's father. Let us have tea and my evening paper."
Once at the tea-table there was no more anxiety about Prince Albert.
"There are sandwiches," he said. "There is toast. There is jam. Also these are caviare and these are bacon. And there is iced coffee. I will stay here. But it is very strange that Lady Chesterford is not here. Eat those sandwiches, Sophy. And there are cakes. Why is not Lady Chesterford – "
"She is flying, dearest," said she. "Dodo cannot give us tea while she is flying. Ah, and here is dearest Edith and Lord Ledgers."
The news of the august arrivals had spread through the house, and such guests as were in it came out on to the terrace. Dodo's father took up an advantageous position between the Prince and the Princess, and was with difficulty persuaded to put on his hat again. He spoke with a slight Scotch accent that formed a pleasant contrast to the German inflection.
"My daughter will be much distressed, your Highness," he said, "that she has not been here to have the honour to receive you. And so, your Highness, the privilege falls on me, and honoured I am – "
"So kind of you, Mr. Vane," said that genial woman. "And your children, Nadine? They are well. And, dearest Edith, you have been in Berlin, I hear. How was my cousin Willie?"
Mr. Vane gave a little gasp; he prevented himself with difficulty from taking off his hat again.
"The Emperor came to my concert there, ma'am," said Edith.
"He would be sure to. He is so musical: such an artist. His hymn of Aegir. You have heard his hymn? What do you think about it?"
Edith's honesty about music was quite incorruptible.
"I don't think anything at all about it," she said. "There's nothing to think about."
Princess Albert choked with laughter.
"I shall tell Willie what you say," she said. "So good for him. Albert dearest, Mrs. Arbuthnot says that Willie's Aegir is nothing at all. Remind me to tell Willie that, when I write."
"Also, I will not any such thing remind you," said her husband. "It is not good to anger Willie. Also it is not good to speak like that of the Emperor. When all is said and done he is the Cherman Emperor. My estate, my money, my land, they are all in Chermany. No! I will have no more iced coffee. I will have iced champagne at dinner."
Mr. Vane already had his hand on the jug.
"Not just a wee thimbleful, sir?" he asked.
"And what is a thimbleful? I do not know a thimbleful. But I will have none. I will have iced champagne at dinner, and I will have port. I will have brandy with my coffee, but that will not be iced coffee: it shall be hot coffee. And I will remind you, Sophy, not to tell the Emperor what that lady said of his music. Instead I will remind you to say that she was gratified and flattified – is it not? – that he was so leutselig as to hear her music. Also I hear a flying-machine, so perhaps now we shall learn why Lady Chesterford was not here – "
"Dearest, you have said that ten times," said his wife, "and there is no good to repeat. There! The machine is coming down. We will go and meet dearest Dodo."
The Prince considered this proposition on its merits.
"No: I will sit," he said. "I will eat a cake. And I will see what is a thimbleful. Show me a thimbleful. A pretty young lady could put that in her thimble, and I will put it now in my thimble inside me."
Fresh hedonistic plans outlined themselves.
"And when I have sat, I will have my dinner," he said. "And then I will play Bridge, and then I will go to bed, and then I will snore!"
Dodo had frankly confessed that she was a snob; otherwise her native honesty