“Lots! You can knit and embroider and play solitaire—”
“We’ll change all that, don’t worry! Here’s the latest thing in evolution, as old Lance would say, come to put a little pep into the fossils. Mammy, don’t you think I’ve evoluted a whole lot further than Father? Lance says it takes two million years to grow a new toe, or lose one, I forget which, but it seems to me—”
“That’s the dinner bell,” said Edna. “Come in just as you are. No one dresses here.”
“Noblesse oblige!” said Bertie. “I’m going to dress. Tell them to keep the kettle on the hob—whatever that is—for a few minutes.”
He came down again very promptly, with his black head sleek as a seal, and a new and marvelous dark suit. He disdained all the various washable materials; they were “a mess,” he said, no one had any business to be hot enough to want them. He was absolutely correct in every detail, a very model of fashion and deportment; how were they not to be proud of him and delighted with him? He was very attentive to his mother, and even if it were a rather ostentatious courtesy, it warmed her heart.
She grew annoyed, though, when he persisted in smoking cigarettes between courses.
“It’s very bad manners,” she said. “It’s disrespectful to me and your sisters. And what’s more, no one smokes here in the dining-room. It isn’t a hotel.”
“I’ll teach it to be. And it’s not disrespectful, dear creatures. It’s simply being done now.”
“And you’re too young to smoke. It’s very harmful at your age. I can’t bear to see you, Bertie!”
“Mammy, don’t spoil my poor little holiday! Two weeks—that’s all! Up there with old Lance, I neither smoke, chew, drink, spit nor cuss. Let me have my brief day!”