"Also that was a very clever thing you said, Lady Chesterford, when you came in from your flying," he said. "I shall tell the Princess Sophy, Lady Chesterford said to me what was very amusing. 'I flew to meet you,' she said, and that is very clever. She had been flying, and also to fly to meet someone means to go in a hurry. It was a pon."
"Yes, dearest, get on with your dealing. You have told me twice already."
"And now I tell you three times, and so you will remember. Always, when I play Bridge, Lady Dodo, I play with the Princess for my partner, for if I play against her, what she wins I lose and also what I win she loses, and so it is nothing at all. Ach! I have turned up a card unto myself, and it is an ace, and I will keep it. I will not deal again when it is so nearly done."
"But you must deal again," cried his partner. "It is the rule, Albert, you must keep the rule."
He laid down the few cards that remained to be dealt, and opened his hands over the table, so that she could not gather up those already distributed.
"But I shall not deal again," he said, "the deal is so near complete. And there is no rule, and my cigar is finished."
Dodo gave a little suppressed squeal of laughter.
"No, go on, sir," she said. "We don't mind."
He raised his hands.
"So there you are, Sophy!" he said. "You were wrong, and there is no rule. Do not touch the cards, while I get my fresh cigar. They are very good: I will take one to bed."
He slowly got up.
"But finish your deal first," she said. "You keep us all waiting."
He slowly sat down.
"Ladies must have their own way," he said. "But men also, and now I shall have to get up once more for my cigar."
"Daddy, fetch the Prince a cigar," said Dodo.
He looked at her, considering this.
"But, no; I will choose my own," he said. "I will smell each, and I will take the smelliest."
During this hand an unfortunate incident occurred. The Princess, seeing an ace on the table, thought it came from an opponent, and trumped it.
"But what are you about?" he asked. "Also it was mine ace."
She gathered up the trick.
"My fault, dearest," she said. "Quite my fault. Now what shall I do?"
He laid down his hand.
"But you have played a trump when I had played the ace," he said.
"Dearest, I have said it was a mistake," said she.
"But it is to take five shillings from my pocket, that you should trump my ace. It is ridiculous that you should do that. If you do that, you shew you cannot play cards at all. It was my ace."
The rubber came to an end over this hand, and Dodo swiftly added up the score.
"Put it down, Nadine," she said. "We shall play to-morrow. We each of us owe eighty-two shillings."
The Prince adopted the more cumbrous system of adding up on his fingers, half-aloud, in German, but he agreed with the total.
"But I will be paid to-night," he said. "When I lose, I pay, when I am losed I am paid. And it should have been more. The Princess trumped my ace."
The entrance of a tray of refreshments luckily distracted his mind from this tragedy, and he rose.
"So I will eat," he said, "and then I will be paid eighty-two marks. I should be rich if every evening I won eighty-two marks. I should give the Princess more pin-money. But I will fly to eat, Lady Chesterford. That was your joke: that I shall tell Willie, but not about his music."
Dodo took the Princess up to her room, followed by her maid who carried a tray with some cold soup and strawberries on it.
"Such a pleasant evening, dear," she said. "Ah, there is some cold soup: so good, so nourishing. This year I think we shall stop in England till the review at Kiel, when we go with Willie. So glorious! The Cherman fleet so glorious, and the English fleet so glorious. What do you say, Marie? A little box? How did the little box come here? What does it say? Vane's patent soap-box."
Dodo looked at the little box.
"Oh, that's my father," she said. "Really, ma'am, I'm ashamed of him. His manufacture, you know. I expect he has put one in each of our rooms."
"But how kind! A present for me! Soap! So convenient. So screaming! I must thank him in the morning."
Then came a tap from the Prince's room next door, and he entered.
"Also, I have found a little box," he said. "Why is there a little iron box? I do not want a little iron box."
"Dearest, a present from Mr. Vane," said his wife. "So kind! So convenient for your soap."
"Ach! So! Then I will take my soap also away inside the box. I will have eighty-two marks and my soap in a box. That is good for one evening. Also, I wish it was a gold box."
Dodo went downstairs again, and found her father in a sort of stupor of satisfaction.
"A marvellous brain," he said. "I consider that the Prince has a marvellous brain. Such tenacity! Such firmness of grasp! Eh, when he gets hold of an idea, he isn't one of your fly-aways that let it go again. He nabs it."
His emotion gained on him, and he dropped into a broader pronunciation.
"And the Princess!" he said. "She speaking of Wullie, just like that. 'Wullie,' as I might say 'Dodo.' Now that gives a man to think. Wullie! And him his Majesty the Emperor!"
Dodo kissed him.
"Daddy, dear," she said, "I am glad you've had a nice evening. But you put us all out of the running, you know. Oh, and those soap-boxes, you wicked old man! But they're delighted with them. She is going to thank you to-morrow."
"God! An' there's condescension!" said he reverently.
CHAPTER III
CROSS-CURRENTS
Dodo had been obliged to go to church on Sunday morning by way of being in attendance on Princess Albert. She did not in the least mind going to church, in fact she habitually did so, and sang loudly in the choir, but she did not like going otherwise than of her own free-will, for she said that compulsion made a necessity of virtue. Church and a stroll round the hot-houses, where the Prince ate four peaches, accounted for most of the morning, but after lunch, when he retired to his room like a flushed boa-constrictor, and Jack had taken the Princess off in a motor to see the place where something happened either to Isaac Walton or Isaac Newton, Dodo felt she could begin to devote herself to some of the old friends, who had originally formed the nucleus of her party. For this purpose she pounced on the first one she came across, who happened to be Miss Grantham, and took her off to the shady and sequestered end of the terrace. Up to the present moment she had only been able to tell Grantie that she was changed; now she proceeded to enlarge on that accusation. Grantie had accepted (you might almost say she had courted) middle-age in a very decorous and becoming manner: her hair, fine as floss silk had gone perfectly white, thus softening her rather hard, handsome horse-like face, and she wore plain expensive clothes of sober colours with pearls and lace and dignity.
"You've changed, Grantie," said Dodo, "because you've gone on doing the same sort of thing for so long. Nothing has happened to you."
"Then I ought to have remained the same," said Grantie with composure. She put up a parasol as she spoke, as if in anticipation of some sort of out-pouring.
"That's