Robin very rudely made what is called “a face” at his mother, and replaced the receiver with so great a peremptoriness that he chipped a piece of enamel off it.
“Darling, you’ve got no manners,” she said.
“I know. Badly brought up. But, then, you see I’ve got you for the present. And then it’s the turn of the undertaker. But I wish you would come on the river instead.”
“But, darling, Mr. Pantitzi with—with his plumes and his coffin. Don’t insist.”
“Will you come if I insist?” asked the boy.
“I suppose so. What a bully you are! No one else in the wide world treats me like that. Go away, while I finish dressing and explaining to Mr. Pantitzi. We won’t take anyone else, shall we?”
“Not even Mr. Kuhlmann,” said Robin confidently.
Some twenty more guests came down from London that morning in time for lunch, to spend the afternoon, dine and scurry back to town again by train or motor that evening, since the sleeping accommodation of the house was already taxed to its limit. Mrs. Pounce, very nearly covered with pearls, glided about from group to group as they sat in the loggia, or beneath the big awning that covered in one end of the terrace, as if moving on castors, and steadily and relentlessly worked her way into introduction to and conversation with anyone whom she did not know who was worth knowing. There was an excursion in the steam launch five miles up the river to where another hostess was keeping open Sunday, and a party of her guests came down the river to have tea at Grote. Some played lawn tennis, and since the man who had just won the open championship at Wimbledon was among the Sunday arrivals, there was a sort of queue of incompetent but eager ladies to be his partner, and the poor young man, who would far more contentedly have sat in the shade, and flirted desperately with each of his partners for the period of a set, was obliged to play for some four hours on end.
Others were taken to a golf links some twenty miles distant and indulged in mixed foursomes, and the more sedentary, having exhausted the current scandalous topics, made up bridge-tables in the loggia. A troop of servants hovered about all afternoon with trays of cigarettes and iced drinks in long glasses, to give support and stimulant to the hours that intervened between lunch and tea, between tea and dinner.
A fever of mere living, a determination to make the most out of the present moment, whether bridge or scandal or games were the tincture in which the present moment was administered, pervaded the huge, extravagant restaurant, in which were collected the prettiest women and the most notable men who at the moment were the cream on that great saturated tipsy-cake called “the great world,” as opposed to the world generally.