Anyhow, everyone there tonight shared the same totem, and each one of them was the hero of one of the old jokes. Master Nathaniel was asked if his crimson velvet breeches were a blackish crimson because, many years ago, he had forgotten to go into mourning for his father-in-law; and when Dame Marigold had, finally, tentatively pointed out to him his omission, he had replied angrily, "I am in mourning!" Then, when with upraised eyebrows she had looked at the canary-coloured stockings that he had just purchased, he had said sheepishly, "Anyhow, it's a blackish canary."
Few wines have as strong a flavour of the grape as this old joke had of Master Nathaniel. His absent-mindedness was in it, his power of seeing things as he wanted them to be (he had genuinely believed himself to be in mourning) and, finally, in the "blackish canary" there was the tendency, which he had inherited, perhaps, from his legal ancestors, to believe that one could play with reality and give it what shape one chose.
Then, Master Ambrose Honeysuckle was asked whether the Honeysuckles considered a Moongrass cheese to be a cheese; the point being that Master Ambrose had an exaggerated sense of the importance of his own family, and once in the law-courts, when the question arose as to whether a dragon (there were still a few harmless, effete dragons lurking in caves in out-of-the-way parts of Dorimare) were a bird or a reptile, he had said, with an air of finality, "The Honeysuckles have always considered them to be reptiles." And his wife, Dame Jessamine, was asked if she wanted her supper "on paper," owing to her habit of pinning her husband down to any rash promise, such as that of a new barouche, by saying, "I'd like that on paper, Ambrose."
And then there was Dame Marigold's brother, Master Polydore Vigil, and his wife, Dame Dreamsweet, and old Mat Pyepowders and his preposterous, chattering dame, and the Peregrine Laquers and the Goceline Flacks and the Hyacinth Baldbreeches—in fact, all the cream of the society of Lud-in-the-Mist, and each of them labelled with his or her appropriate joke. And the old jokes went round and round, like bottles of port, and with each round the company grew more hilarious.
The anonymous antiquary could have found in the culinary language of Dorimare another example to support his thesis; for the menu of the supper provided by Dame Marigold for her guests sounded like a series of tragic sonnets. The first dish was called "The Bitter-Sweet Mystery"—it was a soup of herbs on the successful blending of which the cooks of Lud-in-the-Mist based their reputation. This was followed by "The Lottery of Dreams," which consisted of such delicacies as quail, snails, chicken's liver, plovers' eggs, peacocks' hearts, concealed under a mountain of boiled rice. Then came "True-Love-in-Ashes," a special way of preparing pigeons; and last, "Death's Violets," an extremely indigestible pudding decorated with sugared violets.
"And now!" cried Master Nathaniel gleefully, "here comes the turn of our old friend! Fill your glasses, and drink to the King of Moongrass Cheeses!"
"To the King of Moongrass Cheeses!" echoed the guests, stamping with their feet and banging on the table. Whereupon Master Nathaniel seized a knife, and was about to plunge it into the magnificent cheese, when suddenly Ranulph rushed round to his side and, with tears in his eyes, implored him, in a shrill terrified voice, not to cut the cheese. The guests, thinking it must be some obscure joke, tittered encouragingly, and Master Nathaniel, after staring at him in amazement for a few seconds, said testily, "What's taken the boy? Hands off, Ranulph, I say! Have you gone mad?" But Ranulph's eyes were now starting out of his head in fury, and, hanging on to his father's arm, he screamed in his shrill, childish voice, "No, you won't! you won't, you won't! I won't let you!"
"That's right, Ranulph!" laughed one of the guests. "You stand up to your father!"
"By the Milky Way! Marigold," roared Master Nathaniel, beginning to lose his temper, "what's taken the boy, I ask?"
Dame Marigold was looking nervous. "Ranulph! Ranulph!" she cried reproachfully, "go back to your place, and don't tease your father."