"You have broken in upon a really delicious little bit of gossip," she says to Sir Mark, coquettishly; whereupon Sir Mark, as in duty bound, entreats her to retail it again to him.
She doesn't.
"I hope you have been miserable without us," says Dicky Browne, sinking into a chair beside Portia, and lifting the Boodie on to his knee. (It would be impossible to Dicky Browne to see a child anywhere without lifting it on to his knee). "We've been wretched in the dining-room; we thought Sir Christopher would never tip us the wink—I mean," correcting himself with assumed confusion, "give us the word to join you. What are you looking at? An album?"
"Yes; you may look at it, too," says Portia, pushing it anxiously towards him. She cannot talk to-night. There is a mental strain upon her brain that compels her to silence. If he would only amuse himself with the caricatures of his friends the book contains.
But he won't. Mr. Browne rises superior to the feeble amusements of the ordinary drawing-room.
"No, thank you," he says, promptly. "Nothing on earth offends me more than being asked to look at an album. Why look at paper beauties when there are living ones in the room?"
Here he tries to look sentimental, and succeeds, at all events, in looking extremely funny. He has been having a good deal of champagne, and a generous amount of Burgundy, and is now as happy and contented as even his nearest and dearest could desire. Don't mistake me for a moment; nobody ever saw Mr. Browne in the very faintest degree as—well, as he ought not to be; but there is no denying that after dinner he is gaiety itself, and (as Dulce's governess used to say of him), "very excellent company indeed."
"I always feel," he goes on airily, still alluding to the despised album, "when any one asks me to look at a book of this kind, as if they thought I was a dummy and couldn't talk. And I can talk, you know."
"You can—you can, indeed," says Sir Mark, feelingly. "Dulce, what was that we were reading yesterday? I remember, now, a quotation from it àpropos of talking, not àpropos of our friend Dicky, of course. 'Then he will talk. Good gods, how he will talk!' Wasn't that it?"
"Sing us something, Dicky, do. You used to sing long ago," says Julia, insinuatingly, who thinks she might be able to accomplish another surreptitious doze under cover of the music.