“No, no!” interrupted Mrs Albert. “One of the engine’s greatest uses is in agriculture. It does everything—threshes, garners, mows, milks—or no, not that, but almost everything. No self-respecting farmer, they say, dreams of being without one—that is, of course, if he knows about it. You can see what it would have meant, if one had been thus publicly introduced on the princely farm at Sandringham. All England would have rung with demands for the Oboid—and Albert feels sure that the American man would have been grateful—and—and—then perhaps we need never have left Fernbank at all.”
My poor friend shook her head mournfully at the thought
“And the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn?” I asked.
The fire came back into Mrs Albert’s eye. “That woman,” she said, with bitter calmness, “was positively not ashamed to intrude her own mercenary and self-seeking designs upon this loyal and purely patriotic association. Why, she did it almost openly. She intrigued behind my back with whole streetsful of people that one would hardly know on ordinary occasions, paid them calls in a carriage got up for the occasion with a bright new coat of arms, made friends with them, promised them heaven only knows what, and actually secured nineteen votes to my three for the purchase of a mouldy old piece of tapestry—something about Richard III and Oliver Cromwell meeting on the battlefield, I think the subject is—which belonged to her husband’s family. Of course, my lips are sealed, but I have been told that at Christie’s it would hardly have fetched £100. I say nothing myself, but I can’t prevent people drawing certain deductions, can I? And when I reflect also that her two most active supporters in this nefarious business were Lady Thames-Ditton—whose financial difficulties are notorious—and the Countess of Wimps—— whose tradespeople—well, we won’t go into that—it does force one to ask whether the fabric of British society is not being undermined at its very top. In this very day’s paper I read that the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn has hired a yacht, and will spend the summer in Norwegian waters—while we—we——”
The door opened, and we made out through the half-light the comfortable figure of Uncle Dudley. He was mopping his brow, and breathed heavily from his long walk as he advanced.
“Well?” Mrs Albert asked, in a saddened and subdued tone, “Did you see the place?”
“There are five bedrooms on the two upper floors,” he made answer, “but there’s no bath-room, and the bus doesn’t come within four streets of the house.”