Dora smiled at him.
“But that’s just what I didn’t do,” she said. “I only thought of Claude.”
“And well you might. My dear, I love that boy. He’s got into proper hands too: you can make a lot of him. Lord Toasting-fork, Lord Egg-whisk, Lord Frying-pan.”
Uncle Alfred could not get away from inventing titles for “poor old Eddie,” and he did it with a malicious relish that was rather instructive to Dora. It could not be called kind, but it hurt nobody; and his frank amusement at the idea of the peerage was certainly better than the heart-sinkings with which the prospect of the event had inspired Dora when she thought of the genial pomposity with which it would be received. Throughout she had been too heavy, too ponderous: she had pulled long faces instead of laughing, had seen the depressing side of expeditions like the family party in the gondola instead of its humorous aspect. That was a hint worth attending to. She had got a sense of humour, so she believed, yet somehow it had never occurred to her to look at those spoiled days of Venice in a humorous light.
Soon she rose to go.
“Uncle Alfred,” she said, “you’ve done me good, do you know? It is better to be amused than depressed, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my dear, and I hope you’ll laugh at me all the way back to town, me and my great-coat on a day like this, and my goloshes to keep the damp out, and a strip of flannel, I assure you, round the small of my back. Eh, I had the lumbago bad when first I saw you down at Grote, but the sight of those pictures of Sabincourt’s of Eddie and Maria did me more good than a pint of liniment. What a pair of guys! Lord and Lady Biscuit-tin.”
Dora laughed again.
“How horrid of you!” she said. “Well, I must go. Claude and I are going to the theatre to-night. And we are leaving the flat in Mount Street, Uncle Alf, and are to live in the house in Park Lane till the end of the season. Wasn’t it kind of Dad to suggest it?”
“Not a bit of it. You’ll help entertain Maria’s fine friends, half of whom she don’t know by sight. Not but what I envy you: Maria’s as good as a play down at Grote, and Maria in London must be enough to empty the music-halls. She does too, so they tell me. She asks everybody in the ‘London Directory,’ and they all come. Good-bye, my dear; come down again some time and tell me all they do and say. Write it down every evening, else one’s liable to forget the plums.”