They sat round the fire lit in the drawing-room in honour of the occasion, and Aunt Beryl hurried in and out, her face flushed from the kitchen fire, and hoped that they’d “all brought good appetites.”
“There’s the bell, Lydia! I wonder if you’d go down, dear? I can’t spare the girl just now, and it’s only Mr. Almond.”
Lydia willingly opened the door to her old friend, and received his usual, rather precise greeting, together with an old-fashioned compliment on the roses that London had not succeeded in fading. She took him up to the drawing-room.
“Greetings of the season, ladies and gentlemen all,” said Mr. Monteagle Almond, bowing in the doorway.
“Rum old buffer,” said Bob to Lydia, aside.
She smiled rather coldly.
She felt sure that although the Bulteels and Miss Forster—who, after all, was the friend of Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret—might have accepted Mr. Almond and his out-of-date gentility, they would never have approved of Bob and Olive, with their witless, incessant slang.
“Now, then!” said Aunt Beryl, appearing in the doorway divested of her apron, and with freshly washed hands. “Dinner’s quite ready, if the company is. George, will you lead the way with Evelyn?—Olive and Mr. Almond—that’s right—now, Bob, you haven’t forgotten the way to the dining-room—or, if you have, Lydia will show you—and I’ll give Grandpapa an arm.”
Aunt Beryl, for once, was excited and loquacious. Giving Grandpapa an arm, however, was a lengthy process, so that she missed the appreciative exclamations with which each couple duly honoured the festive appearance of the dining-room.
“How bright it looks!” cried Aunt Evelyn. “Now, doesn’t it look bright?”