"Well, there's you," spreading out her fingers in what had been for half a lifetime a pretty affectation of hers, and ticking them off. "And there's old Mother D. of Drayton, and I shall try to get the Duke."
"Oh, your perpetual Peabody Yid," began Charlie.
"Don't," said his cousin, laughing with great charm.
"Well, yes, the Duke, and I've got him already," she said pointing to the General. "And ... and I must have William."
Vic Mosel and Mr. Higginson shouted together: "Risking William! Oh! I say!" while Charlie's eye gleamed at the mention of her brother's name and he gloated on the prospect of a really good shindy.
"Oh, fiddlesticks-ends," said Mary Smith. "He's a white man: besides some one must do host for me. You're too green" (she said that to Fitzgerald), "and he'll behave all right. I'll warn him."
"Then," she went on hurriedly, "then there's Mrs. Carey and her mother, and the Steynings—I can't remember the whole lot. Perkins would tell you. There's sixteen, I know that."
"I'll hold the sponge for William Bailey," said Charlie solemnly; "the General supports the Duke."
"If there's any row," said Mary Smith to him vigorously, "I shall know who started it, and who will lose by it. William's a dear."
And so the flashing talk went round, while, with Mr. Clutterbuck in the Caterham glens, the hours crept on towards an appointed day; and the horses were exercised and the motors ran, and the lake slowly filled, and parties, a little larger with each succeeding week, groups of their old friends and of their new, met and drank champagne at lunch, at dinner, and at supper too, until June was ended.