It is true that she had asked us, but the invitation had been given on our wedding-day, and had been put away with our duplicate wedding presents; we had now disinterred it, because I had bought a motor, and was still in the stage of enthusiasm when the amateur driver will beat up visits for his wife to pay. I do not know how Chichester got there; he, like Lady Derryclare, dated from the benighted period before Philippa knew me, and I may admit that, in common with most husbands, I am not attracted by the male friends of my wife's youth. If Chichester had been the type she fancied, was I merely a Super-Chichester?
Chichester was an elderly young man, worn smooth by much visiting in country houses, and thoroughly competent in the avocations proper to his career. He knew the best "stands" at half the shoots in Ireland, and could tell to half a crown the value set upon each by the keeper; if you gave him a map he could put a pudgy finger upon the good cooks as promptly as an archbishop upon his cathedral towns; he played a useful and remunerative game of bridge; to see his eye, critical, yet alight with healthful voracity, travelling down the array of dishes on the side-table at breakfast, and arranging unhesitatingly the order in which they were to be attacked, was a lesson to the heedless who blunt the fine edge of appetite with porridge.
He faced me at lunch, plump and pink and shining after his bathe; he was clean-shaved (the only reliable remedy for a greying moustache, as I did not fail to point out to Philippa); it increased his resemblance to a well-fed and passé schoolboy. Old Derryclare, whose foible it was to believe that he never had any luncheon, was standing at the sideboard, devouring informally a slice of bread and honey. One of his eyes was bunged up by bee-stings, and the end of his large nose shone red from the same cause.
"Bill," he said, addressing his eldest son, "don't you forget to take those sections on board this afternoon."
"No fear!" responded Bill, helping himself to a beaker of barley-water with hands that bore indelible traces of tar and motor grease.
Bill was a vigorous youth, of the type that I have heard my friend Slipper describe as "a hardy young splinter"; he was supposed to be preparing for a diplomatic career, and in the meantime was apparently qualifying for the engine-room of a tramp steamer (of which, it may be added, his father would have made a most admirable skipper).
"Great stuff, honey, with a rice-pudding," went on Bill. "Mrs. Yeates, do you know I can make a topping rice-pudding?"
I noticed that Chichester, who was seated next to Philippa, suddenly ceased to chew.
"I can do you a very high-class omelette, too," continued Bill, bashing a brutal spoon into the fragile elegance of something that looked as if it were made of snow and spun glass. "I'm not so certain about my mutton-chops and beefsteak, but I've had the knives sharpened, anyhow!"
Chichester turned his head away, as from a jest too clownish to be worthy of attention. His cheek was large, and had a tender, beefy flush in it.