“Well, nobody’s going to quarrel with you about spending your own money,” Monkley interrupted.
“He can give it to the Salvation Army if he likes,” Henry agreed.
The discussion of the more practical aspects of the plan went on for several days. Ultimately it was decided to leave Lillie Road as a first step and take a small house in a suburb; to Sylvia’s great delight, for she was tired of the mustiness of Lillie Road, they moved to Rosemary Avenue, Streatham. It was a newly built house and it was all their own, with the Common at one end of the road, and, better still, a back garden. Sylvia had never lived where she had been able to walk out of her own door to her own patch of green; moreover she thoroughly enjoyed the game of being an exiled king that might be kidnapped by his foes at any moment. To be sure, there were disadvantages; for instance, she was not allowed to cultivate an acquaintanceship with the two freckled girls next door on their right, nor with the boy who had an air-gun on their left; but generally the game was amusing, especially when her father became the faithful old French servant, who had guarded her all these years, until Mr. James Monkley, the enthusiastic American amateur of genealogy, had discovered the little king hidden away in the old servant’s cottage. Henry objected to being ordered about by his own daughter, but his objections were overruled by Jimmy, and Sylvia gave him no rest.
“That damned Condé says he’s a lay Jesuit,” Henry grumbled. “But what am I? A lay figure. I suppose you wouldn’t like me to sleep in a kennel in the back yard?” he asked. “Another thing I can’t understand is why on earth you had to be an American, Jimmy.”
Monkley told Henry of his sudden impulse to be an American at the Emperor’s reception.
“Never give way to impulse,” Henry said. “You’re not a bit like an American. You’ll get a nasty growth in your nose or strain it or something. Americans may talk through the nose a bit; but you make a noise like a cat that’s had its tail shut in a door. It’s like living in a Punch and Judy show. It may not damage your nose, but it’s very bad for my ears, old man. It’s all very fine for me to be a French servant. I can speak French; though I don’t look like the servant part of it. But you can’t speak American, and if you go on trying much harder you very soon won’t be able to speak any language at all. I noticed to-day, when you started talking to the furniture fellow, he looked very uneasy. I think he thought he was sitting on a concertina.”
“Anyway, he cleared off without getting this month’s instalment,” Monkley said.
“Oh, it’s a very good voice to have when there are duns kicking around,” Henry said. “Or in a crowded railway carriage. But as a voice to live with, it’s rotten. However, don’t listen to me. My advice doesn’t count nowadays. Only,” and Henry paused impressively, “when people advise you to try linseed oil for your boots as soon as you start talking to them, then don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Notwithstanding Henry’s pessimism, Monkley continued to practise his American; day by day the task of imposing Sylvia on the world as the King of Spain and France was being carefully prepared, too carefully, it seemed to Sylvia, for so much talk beforehand was becoming tiresome. The long delay was chiefly due to Henry’s inability to keep in his head the numerous genealogical facts that were crammed down his throat by the Prince de Condé.
“I never was any good at history even when I was a boy,” Henry protested. “Never. And I was never good at working out cousins and aunts. I know I had two aunts, and hated them both.”