“Oh dear, no, Gertrude! Surely you know Bertha by sight! I never had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Pickering before.”
“Charmed to meet you,” said Mrs. Pickering again, giving a kind of curtsy and smiling at Lady Gertrude. “Ah, there’s my little friend! Well, Cliff, didn’t we have fun the other day? Eustace was sorry he couldn’t come to-day. We had the greatest larks, Lady Kellynch! I play with the kids just like one of themselves. We’ve got a great big room fixed up on purpose for Cissie and Eustace to romp. We haven’t been there very long yet, Lady Kellynch. You know that big corner house in Hamilton Place leading into Park Lane. My husband thinks there’s nothing good enough for the children. If it comes to that, he thinks there’s nothing good enough for me.” She giggled. “He gave me this emerald brooch only this morning. ‘Oh, Tom,’ I said, ‘what a silly you are. You don’t want to make a fuss about birthdays now we’re getting on.’ But he is silly about me! It’s a nice little thing, isn’t it?” she said, showing it to Lady Gertrude, who put up her glass to examine it.
“Lady Gertrude Münster—Mrs. Pickering,” said Lady Kellynch. “Some tea?”
“Thanks, no tea. It’s a pretty little thing, isn’t it, Lady Münster?”
“Rather nice. Are they real?” asked Lady Gertrude.
Mrs. Pickering laughed very loudly. “You’re getting at me. I shouldn’t be so pleased with it if it came out of a cracker! But what I always say about presents, Lady Kellynch, is, it isn’t so much the kind thought, it’s the value of the gift I look at. No, I meant——”
“What you said, I suppose,” said Lady Gertrude, who was rather enjoying herself, as she saw her hostess was irritated.
“Whoever’s that pretty picture over there?”
Mrs. Pickering got up and went to look at the piano.
Lady Kellynch still retained (with several other passé fashions) the very South Kensington custom of covering up her large piano with a handsome piece of Japanese embroidery, which was caught up at intervals into bunchy bits of drapery, fastened by pots of flowers with sashes round their necks and with a very large number of dark photographs in frames, so very artistic in their heavy shading that one saw only a gleam of light occasionally on the tip of the nose or the back of the neck—all the rest in shadow—all with very large dashing signatures slanting across the corners, chiefly of former dim social celebrities or present well-known obscurities. The photograph she was looking at now was a pretty one of Bertha.