“Would that be the book of cross-word puzzles, ma’am?” she asked. “I don’t think her Highness brought any other book, and that she’s taken with her for her drive.”
Lucia trudged sadly away. Half way across the Green she saw Georgie and Daisy Quantock with a large sort of drawing-board under arm coming briskly in her direction. She knew where they were going, and she pulled her shattered forces together.
“Dearest Daisy, not set eyes on you!” she said. “A few friends from London, how it ties one! But I shall pop in to-morrow, for I stop till Tuesday. Going to have a ouija party with dear Piggy and Goosie? Wish I could come, but Lady Ambermere has quartered herself on me for tea, and I must run on and catch her up. Just been to your delicious Museum. Wonderful mittens! Wonderful everything. Pepino and I will look out something for it!”
“Very kind,” said Daisy. It was as if the North Pole had spoken.
Pug and Miss Lyall and Lady Ambermere and her two depressed guests had been admitted to The Hurst before Lucia caught them up, and she found them all seated stonily in the music-room, where Stephen Merriall had been finishing his official correspondence. Well Lucia knew what he had been writing about: there might perhaps be a line or two about The Hurst, and the party week-ending there, but that, she was afraid, would form a mere little postscript to more exalted paragraphs. She hastily introduced him to Lady Ambermere and Miss Lyall, but she had no idea who Lady Ambermere’s guests were, and suspected they were poor relations, for Lady Ambermere introduced them to nobody.
Pug gave a series of wheezy barks.
“Clever little man,” said Lady Ambermere. “He is asking for his tea. He barks four times like that for his tea.”
“And he shall have it,” said Lucia. “Where are the others, Stephen?”
Mr. Merriall exerted himself a little on hearing Lady Ambermere’s name: he would put in a sentence about her....
“Lord Limpsfield and Mrs. Garroby-Ashton have gone to play golf,” he said. “Barbarously energetic of them, is it not, Lady Ambermere? What a sweet little dog.”