"Objection! Quite the contrary. Capital idea!" Sir William spoke heartily.
Bobby, fourteen but looking nearer eighteen, spilled over and sprawled out of an arm-chair as he beat the arm, and cried out with animation and a mouth full of griddle cake, "Bags I teach you, Fräulein!"
"I hope you've been taking it out of Gavan," Sir William had called out by way of greeting to Julian. Julian played up by proceeding to describe with mock braggadoccio how he'd completely taken the shine out of the champion. That person, handing tea, contented himself with privately observing yet again how his friend, long and lithe and dark, offered to the rotund little figure of the eminent official a contrast that ministered pleasantly to a sense of the ludicrous. Sir William's bald bullet head barely reached the height of Julian's chest. But it was notorious—and Napier had not worked for two years with Sir William without finding good reason to share the prevalent opinion—that inside the aforesaid bullet was an uncommon amount of shrewd sense and a highly developed skill in organizing power.
Sir William ran his department as he ran his vast commercial enterprises, with an ease that was own child of intelligence of a high degree. But now, as though it were the main factor in life, he talked golf.
The governess, after a perfunctory "how do you do" to the visitor, had leaned over to stroke the Aberdeen. The lady's full-moon face—with its heavy, shapely nose, its smooth apple cheeks, its quiet, beautiful mouth—was bent down till her chin rested on her generous bust. It occurred to Napier that she often adopted this pose. It gave her an air of pensiveness, of submission, the more striking in a person of so much character.
Also, the little tendrils of yellow hair that escaped from under the Gretchen-like banded braids cast delicate shadows on the whitest neck Napier had ever seen. Oh, she had her points.
"Did you hear, Mr. Grant?" Madge called out. "Miss von Schwarzenberg says now she wants to learn our foolish national game."
"Never!" Julian turned back to the tea-table. His tone was faintly ironic—as though the sensation created by this lady's conversion to golf seemed disproportionate to its importance.
Lady McIntyre lifted her appealing eyes. "I wonder if you'd be very kind, Mr. Grant, and help the children to teach Miss von Schwarzenberg?"
The almost infinitesimal pause was cancelled, obliterated, by Miss von Schwarzenberg's promptitude. "Oh, I couldn't think of being such a trouble." She had risen. "Sit here, Mr. Grant," she said. "Yes, please. I've finished." In spite of his protest, she retired to a chair on the far side of the fireplace—Napier's side—and picked up her knitting.