Instant on the heels of these astonishing statements the swing door to the kitchen was flung open, and Mrs. Cadogan's angry voice was projected through it.
"Hannah! go tell the Mistress the butcher's below, and he says he never heard tell of the like, and would she lend him one o' the Major's spears? How would the likes o' him have a spear! Such goings on!"
"What the devil is all this about?" I said with an equal anger. "No one is to touch my spears!"
"Thanks be to God, the Major's come home!" exclaimed the ruler of the kitchen, advancing weightily into the hall. "There's no fear I'd put a hand on your spears, sir, nor the butcher neither, the poor, decent man! He says he's supplying the gentry for twenty-five years, and he was never asked to do the like of a nasty thing like that!"
"Like what!" I said, with growing wrath and bewilderment.
"It's what the Mistress said," rejoined Mrs. Cadogan, the flush of injury mounting to her cap-frill. "That what-shall-I-call-him—that King, wouldn't ate mate without it'd be speared! And it's what I say," she went on, perorating loudly and suddenly, "what's good enough for Christians and gentry is good enough for an owld Blackamoor!"
It was now sufficiently obvious that Philippa had, with incredible perfidy, taken advantage of my absence to embroil herself in the entertainment of barbaric royalty. "Tell the butcher to wait," was all I could trust myself to say, as I started in search of my wife.
"Wait, Sinclair! I'm coming down!" cried an urgent voice from the upper landing, and Philippa, attired in what I may perhaps describe as a tempestuous dressing-gown, came swiftly downstairs and swept me before her into the drawing-room.
"My dear," she said breathlessly, "let me break it to you as gently as possible. The Shutes called for me in the motor after you left yesterday, and we went on board Bernard's yacht and sailed round to tea with Captain Calthorpe and the Sultan. We were becalmed coming back, and we were out all night—we had nothing to eat but the men's food—not that I wanted anything!" She gave a nauseated shudder of reminiscence. "There was an awful swell. It rained, too. Cecilia and I tried to sleep in the cabin with all our clothes on; I never spent a more horrible night. The yacht crawled in with the tide at about ten o'clock this morning, and I got back here half-dead, and was just going up to bed when Captain Calthorpe arrived on a car and said that the Sultan wanted to lunch here to-morrow. He says we must have him—it's a kind of Royal command—in fact, I suppose you ought to wear your frock-coat!"
"I'm dashed if I do!" I said, with decision.