Instead of interring the hatchet that had flown back, as if it were that fabulous volatile the boomerang, she was in a greater stew than ever, and resolved to leave no stone unturned to trip him up. But what trick to play, seeing that all the honours were in Mr Bhosh's hands?
She could not officiate as Marplot to discredit him in the affections of his ladylove, since the Princess was too severely enamoured to give the loan of her ear to any sibillations from a snake in grass.
How else, then, to hinder his match? At this she was seized with an idea worthy of Maccaroni himself. She paid a complimentary visit to the Princess, arrayed in the sheepish garb of a friend, and contrived to lure the conversation on to the vexed question of prying into futurity.
Surely, she artfully suggested, the Princess at such a momentous epoch of her existence had, of course, not neglected the sensible precaution of consulting some competent soothsayer respecting the most propitious day for her nuptials with the accomplished Mr Bhosh?...
What, had she omitted to pop so important a question? How incredibly harebrained! Fortunately, there was yet time to do the needful, and she herself would gladly volunteer to accompany the Princess on such an errand.
Princess Petunia fell a ready victim into the jaws of this diabolical booby-trap and inquired the address and name of the cleverest necromancer, for it is matter of notoriety that London ladies are quite as superstitious and addicted to working the oracle as their native Indian sisters.
The Duchess replied that the Astrologer-Royal was a facile princeps at uttering a prediction, and accordingly on the very next day she and the Princess, after disguising themselves, set forth on the summit of a tramway 'bus to the Observatory Temple of Greenwich, where, after first propitiating the prophet by offerings, they were ushered into a darkened inner chamber. Although they were strictly pseudo, he at once informed them of their genuine cognomens, and also told them much concerning their past of which they had hitherto been ignorant.
And to the Princess he said, stroking the long and silvery hairs of his beard, "My daughter, I foresee many calamities which will inevitably befall thee shouldest thou marry before the day on which the bridegroom wins a certain contest called the Derby with a horse of his own."
The gentle Petunia departed melancholy as a gib cat, since Mr Bhosh was not the happy possessor of so much as a single racing-horse of any description, and it was therefore not feasible that he should become entitled to wear the cordon bleu of the turf in his buttonhole on his wedding day!
With many sighs and tears she imparted her piece of news to the horror-stricken ears of our hero, who earnestly assured her that it was contrary to commonsense and bonos mores, to attach any importance to the mere ipse dixit of so antiquated a charlatan as the Astrologer-Royal, who was utterly incapable—except at very long intervals—to bring about even such a simple affair as an eclipse which was visible from his own Observatory!