“She can’t get here this afternoon. Apologies, and all that. Look here, Patch, can I carry on without changing?”
“Of course,” said Bill. “Fire away.”
They got through it fairly well. Alfred forgot his words several times and said, “Don’t tell me,” with great emphasis when Nancy tried to prompt him, and Mumma called out from her place amongst the spectators: “Now, Ahlfred, don’t get fussed. Don’t let yourself get fussed, dear.” The only sentence that he seemed to have no difficulty at all in remembering was the one in which he referred to “the heighth of the mountains.” The others acquitted themselves reasonably well, and Sallie, who has never known the meaning of nervousness, was brilliant as the Muscovite maiden.
“Those boots of mine look uncommonly well on the stage,” said General Kendal at the end of it all.
And the only comment that I heard from either of his daughters was that we must try and remember it would be all the same a hundred years hence.
Whether or not Bill Patch was encouraged by these observations, he made no reply to them, but gave his attention to Mrs. Fazackerly and a doubtful point in the music.
Martyn Ambrey came up to me.
“Do you know what’s happened?”
“The cat has just swallowed the last piece of lipstick in the country, and the whole thing will be ruined,” I suggested somewhat wearily. The last few days had been over-full of such critical situations.
“Much more cataclysmic than that. Do you know why that woman didn’t turn up this afternoon?”