“I do, sir. Leastways, if you ain’t, Joseph Kelly will be disappointed.”
Such disinterestedness was not exactly flattering, yet the Duke was touched by it. Indeed, Sergeant Kelly’s sturdy common sense was so reassuring that he was invited to have a cigar. At the request of his host, he pressed the bell, one long and one short, and in the process of time a servant appeared with a box of Coronas. Joe chose one, smelt it, placed it to his ear and then put it sedately in his pocket.
“I’ll not smoke it now, sir,” he said urbanely. “I’ll keep it until I can really enjoy it.”
He was graciously invited to take several. With an air of polite deprecation he helped himself to three more. Then he realized that the time had come to withdraw.
The parting was one of mutual esteem. If the girl would consent to pay a visit to Bridport House, the Duke would see her gladly. But again his Grace affirmed that he was not an optimist. Society was in a state of flux, he quite agreed, democracy was knocking at the gate and none knew the next turn in the game. Still the Duke was not unmindful of Sergeant Kelly’s remarkable disinterestedness, and took a cordial leave of him, fully prepared to follow his advice in this affair of thorns.
As soon as the door had closed upon the dignified form of Sergeant Kelly, the Duke lay back in his chair fighting a storm of laughter. Cursed with a sense of humor, at all times a great handicap for such a one as himself, its expression had seldom been less opportune or more uncomfortable. For there was really nothing to laugh at in a matter of this kind. The thing was too grimly serious.
Still, for the moment, this amateur of the human comedy was the victim of a divided mind. He wanted to laugh until he ached over this solemn policeman upholding the fabric of society.
“By gad, he’s right,” Albert John ruminated, as he dipped gout-ridden fingers in his ravished cigar box. “Things are in a state of flux.” He cut off the end of a cigar. “My own view is that this monstrous bluff which these poor fools have allowed some of us to put up since the Conquest, more or less, will mighty soon be about our ears. However,”—Albert John placed the cigar between his lips—“it hardly does to say so.”
For a time this was the sum of his reflections. Then he pressed the bell at his elbow and the servant reappeared.
“Ask Mr. Twalmley to be good enough to telephone to Mr. Dinneford. I wish to see him at once.”