“Possibly.... Don’t know.... Don’t remember....”
They were all three silent. They hurried through dinner: sitting at table bored them. The five or six servants, in white cotton jackets with red linen facings, moved softly on their flat toes, waiting quickly and noiselessly. Steak and salad was served, and a pudding, followed by dessert.
“Everlasting rumpsteak!” Theo muttered.
“Yes, that cook!” laughed Doddie, with her little throaty laugh, clipping her sentences in the half-caste fashion. “She always gives steak, when mamma not here; doesn’t matter to her, when mamma not here. She has no imagination. Too bad though!”
They had been twenty minutes over their dinner when Van Oudijck went back to his office. Doddie and Theo sauntered towards the front of the house.
“Tedious,” Doddie yawned. “Come, we play billiards?”
In the first inner gallery, behind the satin portière, was a small billiard-table.
They played.
“Why am I supposed to have been with you at the gate?”