Lalage did me the honour of laughing. Hilda, after a minute’s consideration, also laughed. But they were not to be distracted from the dead kings.
“We’ll go back to the hotel,” said Lalage, “and rout out poor Pussy. She’ll be wanting more food by this time. You can go and call on the present King or the Queen Mother, or whoever it is who keep the key of that mausoleum and then come back for us. By the way, before you go, just tell me the Portuguese for an ice. It’s desperately hot.”
I told her and then got out of the carriage. I did not call upon either the King or his mother. They were in Cintra, so I should not have had time to get at them even if I had wished. I saw my chief, and, with the fear of Lalage before my eyes, worried him until he gave me a letter to a high official. From him I obtained with great difficulty the permission I wanted. I returned to the hotel. Miss Battersby, though recovering rapidly, was still too feeble to accompany us; so Lalage, Hilda, and I set off without her.
The dead kings were a disappointment. Hilda’s nerve failed her on the doorstep and she declined to go in. Lalage and I went through the exhibition alone. I observed, without surprise, that Lalage turned her eyes away from the objects she had come to inspect. I ventured, when we got out, to suggest that we might perhaps have spent a pleasanter afternoon at Belem. Lalage snubbed me sharply.
“Certainly not,” she said. “I’m going in for the Vice-Chancellor’s prize for English verse next year and the subject is mortality. I shall simply knock spots out of the other competitors when I work in those kings.
“‘Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,’
You know the sort of thing I mean.”
“That’s not original,” I said. “I remember it distinctly in the ‘Golden Treasury,’ though I have forgotten the author’s name.”
“It wasn’t meant to be original. I quoted it simply as an indication of the sort of line I mean to take in my poem.”
“You’ll win the prize to a certainty. When you publish the poem afterward with notes I hope you’ll mention my name. Without me you wouldn’t have got at those kings.”