“I don’t want the boy to start learning to drink,” Henry protested.
Monkley told him to give up the fiction of Sylvia’s boyhood with him, to which Henry replied that, though, as far as he knew, he had only been sitting here ten minutes, Jimmy and Sylvia seemed to have settled the whole world between them in that time.
“What’s more, if she’s going to remain a boy any longer, she’s got to have some new clothes,” Monkley announced.
Sylvia flushed with pleasure, recognizing that cooperative action of which preliminary dressing-up was the pledge.
“You see, I’ve promised to take her round with me to the Emperor of Byzantium.”
“I don’t know that pub,” said Henry. “Is it Walham Green way?”
Monkley told him about meeting the baron, and put forward his theory that people who were willing to be duped by the Emperor of Byzantium would be equally willing to be duped by other people, with much profit to the other people.
“Meaning you and me?” said Henry.
“Well, in this case I propose to leave you out of the first act,” Monkley said. “I’m going to have a look at the scene myself. There’s no one like you with the cards, Harry, but when it comes to the patter I think you’ll give me first.”
Presently, Sylvia was wearing Etons, at Monkley’s suggestion, and waiting in a dream of anticipation; the baron proclaimed that the Emperor would hold a reception on the first Thursday in June. When Monkley said he wanted young Sylvester to go with them, the baron looked doubtful; but Monkley remarked that he had seen the baron coming out of a certain house in Earl’s Court Road the other day, which seemed to agitate him and make him anxious for Sylvia to attend the reception.