“Now it is no good your being modest, is it?” said Cinderella. “Because I know all about you. It was you who kicked those three goals against Scotland in Nineteen Four.”
The confusion of the heir to the barony was dire.
“Not a bit of good your blushing, is it? I saw the match—I was only a flapper then playing Fairy Footlight at the Royal Caledonian, Glasgow, and I went with my Aunt Bessie to Celtic Park, and saw you kick three goals, and I won tons of chocolates off the Scotchies in the Company, because I had put my pinafore on old England, as I always have, and as I always shall—”
“—They say the new system of drainage at the Cassel—”
“—Steve Bloomer himself couldn’t have done better than you did that day—and it is no use your being modest, is it?—”
“—And the Kaiser is one of the most charming and well informed men I have ever—”
“And so you are really the great Phil Shelmerdine, with your hair brushed just as nice as ever. Even when I was a flapper and wore a blue ribbon round my pigtail, I used to think your hair was lovely. You ought never to have left off playing socker; but I suppose you kind of had to when Mr. Vandeleur made a peer of your poor father. But England needs you more than ever now that Steve is on the shelf.”
“Don’t you find the theater a very trying profession, Miss Caspar?” said nice, sensible Cousin Jane from Cumberland. “Aren’t the late hours a fearful strain?”
“One sort of gets used to them,” said Cinderella. “I’m as strong as a pony; and it’s great fun; and it is wonderful how one gets to love the British public.”
“And how the British public gets to love you, Miss Caspar—not, of course, that I mean that that is wonderful.”