“You never will be serious, but I’ll take you there one afternoon, if you don’t believe me.”
The baron continued on his way down-stairs with a kind of mincing dignity, and Mrs. Meares came out of her bedroom.
“Isn’t it nice for the dear baron?” she purred. “He’s received some of his money from Berlin, and at last he can go and look up his old friends. He’s lunching with the Emperor to-day.”
“I hope he won’t drop his crown in the soup,” Monkley said.
“Ah, give over laughing, Mr. Monkley, for I like to think of the poor baron in the society to which he belongs. And he doesn’t forget his old friends. But there, after all, why would he, for, though I’m living in Lillie Road, I’ve got the real spirit of the past in my blood, and the idea of meeting the Emperor doesn’t elate me at all. It seems somehow as if I were used to meeting emperors.”
On the way to the public house Monkley held forth to Sylvia on the prevalence of human folly, and vowed that he would hold the baron to his promise and visit the Emperor himself.
“And take me with you?” Sylvia asked.
“You seem very keen on the new partnership,” he observed.
“I don’t want to be left out of things,” she explained. “Not out of anything. It makes me look stupid. Father treats me like a little girl; but it’s he who’s stupid, really.”
They had reached the public house, and Henry was taken aback by Sylvia’s arrival. She, for her part, was rather disappointed in the saloon bar. The words had conjured something much more sumptuous than this place that reminded her of a chemist’s shop.