"Not here," she said; "they can even believe Ostend is smart. Can you do a sum? If 'it takes three generations to make a gentleman,' how many shops does it take to make a knight?"
"One: England," said Conrad.
"I don't believe he's spoilt after all, Joan," said Lady Bletchworth. "There's hope for him yet."
"It's much too early to say that," murmured Mrs. Adaile. But the glance she cast at him was not discouraging.
CHAPTER XI
The rest of the afternoon promised nothing, so Conrad bought "Le Marquis de Priola" to kill time. It passed away so peacefully that he was surprised when he found it was dead.
After dinner he saw the two women on a lounge, and they moved their skirts for him, and commented on the visitors. There was the Earl of Armoury, wearing a stud as big as a brooch, and a Malmaison the size of a saucer. He made grimaces like Arthur Roberts, and when he sang "Pip, pip! the Lodger and the Twins," Society found him as funny as Harry Randall. As everybody knows, the Duke of Merstham married Flossie Coburg from the music halls; the heir had inherited his mother's gift. "The best of it," said Lady Bletchworth, "is that his mother herself has become too prim for words since she has been respectable. She asks bishops to dinner, and does her hair in plain bands. Heredity is her cross! Oh," she went on, "you'll meet all the world and his wife—Ostend-sibly. A man brought his wife to the hotel last week, and when he went upstairs to bed she wasn't there. After he had searched high and low for her he went to the bureau, and asked the clerk if he could tell him where she was. The clerk hadn't an idea, but said that a married lady came to him a little while ago in a fix—she didn't know the number of her room, and she had forgotten the name of her husband. Please don't smile, I was terribly shocked myself."
Conrad didn't say that the story was not original, and had been told about town six months before.
Then Lord Bletchworth drifted to them, and was tedious. Lord Bletchworth twaddled ponderously. He considered there was a lot of disgraceful bosh being printed about the Service, and the Country at large, in the papers just now. My dear sir, an Englishman who had the interests of England at heart would hold his tongue while she slid down hill, and silently watch her bump to the bottom. That wasn't how he put it, but it was the gist of what he said. He added that the battle of Waterloo had been won on the playing fields of Eton, and he seemed as satisfied with Waterloo as if it were situated in the Transvaal.