‘I dare say you will recollect it very well, my dear,’ said he, ‘if you give your mind to it. And if you cannot remember you can make it up.’
‘Well, if that isn’t a rude speech! But perhaps you’re tired, Thomas, with all this grandeur. For me, I never felt fresher in my life: it comes quite natural to me.’
‘No, I am not the least tired,’ he said. ‘As soon as I have changed my clothes, I shall go down to my office.’
‘Pray leave that for another day. I cannot bear to think of your demeaning yourself with business after what we have been doing: I do not think it is quite respectful to the Princess.’
Suddenly the babble that he had rather welcomed became intolerable. It had cut him off from the world, as if some thick swarm of flies had settled outside the window, utterly obscuring the outlook. Now, in a moment the window seemed to have been opened, and they swarmed in, buzzing about and settling on him.
‘And where should we have been if I hadn’t demeaned myself with business?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t the new wing of the hospital and your pearl pendant, and your chatting like an old friend to a Princess all come out of my demeaning myself?’
Mrs Keeling paid no attention to this: she hardly heard.
‘And if she does come to stay with the Inverbrooms,’ she said, ‘I have no doubt she will express a wish to take lunch with us. We must see about getting a butler, Thomas. Parkinson is a good servant, but I should not like it to be known at court that I only kept a parlour maid.’
The carriage had stopped at the Gothic porch, and Keeling got out.
‘I will promise to let you have twenty butlers on the day she lunches with us,’ he said. ‘Come, get out, Emmeline, and take care how you walk. There’s something gone to your head. It may be champagne or it may be the Princess. I suspect it’s the Princess, and you’re intoxicated. Go indoors, and sleep it off, and let me find you sober at dinner-time. Take my arm.’