Suddenly old Lady Yardley joined in. “I know what he means, Philip,” she said. “He means that he should have been host here, if you were going to depute one of your sons to do the honours for you, and that you preferred that Colin should do them instead. That is what he means.”
“There, mother, that’s enough,” said Philip.
An embarrassed silence ensued, broken by the sound of running steps in the gallery. Just as they arrived at the door, which one of the footmen opened, there was a loud crash and Colin slid in on his back, and had begun to laugh before he picked himself up.
“Gosh, what a bang!” he said. “I believe somebody greased the boards in the hope that I should be in a hurry and fall down. Sorry, father; sorry, granny; sorry, Violet, for upsetting all your nerves. Why—Raymond!”
Colin laid his hand affectionately on his brother’s shoulder.
“I never knew you had come,” he said. “How are you, dear Raymond? How’s Cambridge? We have missed you in all this hullabaloo. Every one asked after you and wanted to know why you weren’t here.”
Colin took the vacant place between Violet and his grandmother.
“How far have you all got?” he said. “Oh, very well, I won’t have any soup. Now this is jolly! Just ourselves, Granny, and short coats and black ties. Vi, darling, why didn’t you come and pull me out of my bath? I was just lying soaking there; I had no idea it was so late.”
Colin spared one fleeting glance at his brother, and began to put into words some of the things he had thought about in his bath.
“Raymond, it is time that you came home,” he said. “The pigeons are worse than ever in the Old Park, and I’m no earthly use at that snap-shooting between the oaks. Give me a rabbit coming towards me along a road, not too fast, and a rest for my gun, I can hit it in the face as well as anybody. But those pigeons among the oaks beat me.”