"Yes," said Lady Muscombe, laying her pretty but slightly over-manicured fingers on Clarence's sleeve. "You're only making everybody uncomfortable. Talk to me instead!"
"Presently," he said. "If you really have got golf clubs, Count, I should like to have a look at them after lunch."
"I never said I had got those things," replied the Count, with a wonderful command over his temper. "And if you want to know what is in the bag, I don't mind telling you—only a few pumpkins from my own gardens."
"You mean to say you make such pets of your bally pumpkins that you take 'em out driving with you? That's such a likely story!"
"Clarence," said the Queen, "I will not have poor Ruprecht badgered like this. If he chooses to carry pumpkins with him—as we do gold sometimes—and distribute them to deserving persons, it is so much the more to his credit."
"He'd get 'em buzzed back at his head pretty soon, if he did!" replied the impenitent Clarence. "He's not exactly the object of general adoration in these parts, as he jolly well knows.... Anything upset you, Marchioness?" he inquired of Lady Muscombe, who was giggling with a quite un-peeress-like lack of restraint.
"Nothing," she said faintly. "Only the—the pumpkins. You really are rather a funny Royal Family, you know!"
"I'm sorry to make myself unpleasant, Mater," said Clarence, returning to the charge. "But I can't swallow those pumpkins. I want the sack brought in so that we can satisfy ourselves what there is in it." The Court Chamberlain, in the hope that the contents, whatever they might be, would at least serve to compromise the Count, instantly despatched one of the pages to fetch the bag.
"Baron," said the Queen angrily, "it is for Us to give orders—not you!"
"Your Majesty must pardon my presumption," he said, as the pages had already obeyed him. "I was merely carrying out the wishes of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince."