"Fine! Glorious!" shouted Mac. "That's something like! That's probably the only honest guest Woods has. I hope, Jack, you went right back to her and did your prettiest to entertain her."
"I tried to, but she had skipped. Give me a pipe, Mac. Lord, fellows, but it's good to get back! You'll find this a haven of rest, Mr. Murphy," and Jack laid his hand on the Irishman's knee.
"It's the only place that fits my shoulders and warms my heart, anyhow," answered Murphy. "It's good of you to let me in. You live so fast over here that a little cranny like this, where you can get out of the rush, is a Godsend. Your adventure downstairs with the dressmaker, Mr. Stirling, reminds me of what happened at one of our great London houses last winter, and which is still the social mystery of London."
Boggs waved his hand to command attention. His friend Murphy's yarns were the hit of the winter. "Listen, Jack," he said in a lower tone, "they are all brand-new and he tells 'em like a master. Nobody can touch him. Draw up, Pitkin—" the sculptor had just come in from Woods's tea.
"We have the same thing in England to fight against that you have here. Our studios and private exhibitions are blocked up with people who are never invited. Hardest thing to keep them out. The incident I refer to occurred in one of those great London houses on Grosvenor Square, occupied that winter by Lord and Lady Arbuckle—a dingy, smoky, grime-covered old mansion, with a green-painted door, flower boxes in the windows, and a line of daisies and geraniums fringing the rail of the balcony above.
"There the Arbuckles gave a series of dinners or entertainments that were the talk of London, not for their magnificence so much as for the miscellaneous lot of people Lady Arbuckle would gather together in her drawing-rooms. If somebody from Vienna had discovered microbes in cherry jam, off went an invitation to the distinguished professor to dine or tea or be received and shaken hands with. Savants with big foreheads, hollow eyes, and shabby clothes; sunburned soldiers from the Soudan; fat composers from Leipsic; long-haired painters from Munich; Indian princes in silk pajamas and kohinoors, were all run to cover, caught, and let loose at the Arbuckle's Thursdays in Lent, or had places under her mahogany. Old Arbuckle let it go on without a murmur. If Catherine liked that sort of thing, why that was the sort of thing that Catherine liked. He would preside at the head of the table in his white choker and immaculate shirt front and do the honors of the house. Occasionally, when Parliament was not sitting, he would stroll through the drawing-rooms, shake hands with those he knew, and return the salaams or stares of those he did not.
"On this particular night there was to be an imposing list of guests, the dinner being served at eight-thirty sharp. Not only was the Prime Minister expected, but a special collection of social freaks had been invited to meet him, including Prince Pompernetski of the Imperial Guards—who turned out afterward to be a renegade Pole and a swindler; the Rajah of Bramapootah—a waddling Oriental who always brought his Cayenne pepper with him in the pocket of his embroidered pajamas; one or two noble lords and their wives, some officers, and a scattering of lesser lights—twenty-two in all.
"At eight-twenty the carriages began to arrive, the Bobby on the beat regulating the traffic; the guests stepping out upon a carpet a little longer and wider than the one Mr. Woods has laid over the sidewalk downstairs.
"Once inside, the guests were taken in charge by a line of flunkeys—the women to a cloak room on the right, the men to a basement room on the left—where 'Chawles' handed each man an envelope containing the name of the lady he was to take out to dinner and a diagram designating the location of his seat at his host's table.
"By eight-twenty-five all the guests had arrived except General Sir John Catnall and Lady Catnall, who had passed thirty years of their life in India and who had arrived in London but the night before, where they were met by one of Lady Arbuckle's notes inviting them to dinner to meet the Prime Minister. That the dear woman had never laid eyes on the Indian exiles and would not know either of them had she met them on her sidewalk made no difference to her. The butler in announcing their names would help her over this difficulty, as he had done a hundred times before. That the short notice might prevent their putting in an appearance did not trouble her in the least. She knew her London. Prime Ministers were not met with every day, even in the best of houses.