One of Mary Pridmore's first acts upon her return from Greylands was to summon the sailorman to dine in Queen Street. She was a little peremptory. That is to say, she could take no refusal; it seemed that a certain Mr. Nixon, a Cabinet Minister, had expressed a wish to meet the author of "Dick Smith."
Miss Pridmore was a little excited by this desire on the part of Mr. Nixon. In her opinion, if you were a member of the Cabinet, it was important you should be met; yet Henry Harper did not attach as much significance to the matter as perhaps he ought to have done. In fact, he was a little vague upon the subject. He knew that the newspapers talked mysteriously about the Cabinet, and abused it fearfully every morning with the most devoted and courageous persistency; also he remembered that one of Auntie's temporary husbands was said to have been a cabinetmaker when he was in work, but neither this fact, nor the attitude of the public press, seemed to afford any reason why he must in no circumstances disappoint the President of the Board of Supererogation.
"Please don't be so cool to the Cabinet, Mr. Harper," Athena pleaded, while the young man sought a way out of the impasse. "When such a man as Mr. Nixon asks to meet you, it means that you have really arrived. Not that it matters. You have arrived without any help from Mr. Nixon. But he is an old friend of mother's, and he is greatly interested in your book."
The Sailor wanted very particularly, but as delicately as he could, to escape the ordeal of dining in Queen Street, Mayfair. Instinct warned him that this would prove a different matter from a party in Bury Street. The truth was, he had not been able to overcome an unreasonable awe of Lady Pridmore. Then, too, he had an uneasy feeling that he was a little out of his depth with the Prince. Yet again, Miss Silvia, friendly and amusing as she was, gave him a slight sense of hidden, invisible barriers which he could never hope to surmount.
Mary, however, would take no denial. Her mother would be much disappointed, and so would Mr. Nixon, and so would Uncle George, who had also expressed a desire to be present. In Lady Pridmore's opinion this really "ranged" Mr. Harper, and with such a person as Lady Pridmore, that was an operation of the first magnitude, not, of course, that her daughter confided that to the Sailor in so many words.
"I am talking nonsense," said Mary, with that sharp turn of frankness which the Sailor adored in her. "If you don't want to meet people, there is no reason why you should. I sometimes feel exactly the same myself. Mr. Nixon is a bore, and Uncle George—well, he's Uncle George. It will be a tiresome evening for you, but Edward is coming and Jack Ellis, whom we both like, and his fiancée who is quite amusing, and if you really decide to come, I am sure it will please mother."
The Sailor saw, however, that it would please Mary. And that was reason enough for him to accept the invitation after all.
When the day came, it was in fear and trembling that he put on his new evening clothes, with which he had been provided by Edward Ambrose's own tailor. Upon a delicate hint from his friend, he discarded his first suit, which he now realized was a little too crude for a growing reputation. Yet, rather oddly, he could hardly be brought to understand that he had such a thing as a reputation. Indeed, it was only in Queen Street, Mayfair, that a reputation seemed to matter.
A dinner party at No. 50 was a serious affair. He had to begin by shaking hands with Lady Pridmore, who looked like a lady from the walls of Burlington House. A week ago he had been with Mary to the Royal Academy of Arts. Then, also, formidable looking strangers abounded. Foremost of these was Uncle George.
Uncle George was an elderly admiral retired. Among the younger members of the family he was known as "Old Blunderbore." His voice, once of great use on the quarterdeck, was really a little too much for a drawing-room of modest dimensions. Also, his opinions were many and they were unqualified, his stories were long and quite pointless as a rule, he was apt to indulge in a kind of ventriloquial entertainment when he ate his soup, he drank a goodish deal, and was not always very polite to the servants; yet being Uncle George, his sister-in-law seemed to feel that he was a person of immense consequence, and he did not disguise the fact that he considered her a sensible woman for thinking so.