"Lexie will love to come. Me too. But would you mind very much if I brought Mrs. Slightly and Mr. Onions?
"Yours sincerely,
"MAGGY DELAMERE."
Her large and sprawly handwriting covered the sheet. Had it not been for the afterthought in the form of a postscript which she added overleaf, Chalfont might have remained in ignorance of the identity of the two additional guests. It ran thus:
"I forgot you don't know them. Mrs. Slightly could sleep anywhere, being a cat. Mr. Onions is my dog and has a basket in my room. At any other time of the year I would not mind leaving them in charge of the porter at the flats but at Christmas everybody loses their heads and they might not get fed. They are not well bred but they have good manners."
Chalfont did not mind in the least. If Maggy had wanted in addition to bring a tame goat he would have welcomed it. All her eccentricities amused him. Her solicitude for her two pets showed her thoughtfulness and goodness of heart. So, when the day arrived, Mrs. Slightly traveled to Purton Towers in a well-ventilated hat box, while Onions, wildly excited but restrained by a brand-new leather leash, sat between Maggy and Alexandra in the back of the car.
It was a brilliant day, one of those sunny, windless days that belies the time of year. The air was crisp rather than cold, and the two girls, wrapped in their furs and a capacious rug, reveled in the swift rush of the open car infinitely more than if they had been driving in a closed one. Maggy was in prodigious spirits. Chalfont, driving with his man beside him, turned occasionally to watch her, regretting that he was unable to catch a word of her animated talk.
"Isn't life a funny thing, Onions dear," she was bubbling rather than saying. "Six months ago you were a gagaboo little horror eating your namesakes out of a dustbin, and here you are being driven by a real live lord. The beauty of it is you don't know it and wouldn't care if you did. That's one of the reasons why I love you, Onions. You don't mind me being an abandoned female. You don't even know that I am one. That's why King Edward was so fond of his Cæsar. Cæsar didn't love him because he was a king but because he was a man. He might have been a coal-heaver for all Cæsar cared. You little wog-wogs don't know anything about titles or the marriage service, but you can love, honor and obey better than we can, till death makes us howl and bury you."
Onions, straining at his lead, leapt up and tried to snatch a mouthful of her motor-veil.
"Onions, if I were rich I would try to make a heaven on earth for all the doggies in the world. I'd look for all the hungry ones and all the ugly ones and the beaten ones and the ones whose mothers sat on them and made them funny shapes. You should all have lovely patent kennels full of the best quality straw—heaps of it to wiggle around in; and exciting food, bones and the horrible things from insides that you like so much, and sulphur when you weren't looking, to keep you well and make your coats shine. And you should all run about wherever you pleased, chasing bunny-rabbits and mice and the other sniffy things that make dogs so excited. And there should be a special place all wired round for the slow doggies, all full of rabbits so that they couldn't get away. It wouldn't be cruel, because after a time you'd make friends with the bunnies and play hide and seek with them. Oh, what a lovely world we could make it if we had it all to ourselves. Lexie, do look at Onion's face. He's laughing!"