The gong sounded, and they went off to lunch. At the foot of the stairs they met Christabel bringing down her boy. She was not so devoted to him as she had been last year, but there were occasions—like this wet morning, for instance—when she gave herself up to his society.
"Leo is going to eat his dinner with us," she said, smiling at the Baron, "if you will not think him a nuisance."
"On the contrary, I shall be charmed to improve his acquaintance. I hope he will let me sit next him."
"Thant," lisped Leo decisively. "Don't like oo."
"Oh, Leo, how rude."
"Don't reprove him," said the Baron. "It is a comfort to be reminded that for the first three or four years of our lives we all tell the truth. But I mean you to like me, Leo, all the same."
"I hate 'oo," said Leo, frankly—he always expressed himself in strong Saxon English—"but 'oo love my mamma."
This, in a shrill childish treble, was awkward for the rest of the party. Mrs. Fairfax Torrington gave an arch glance at Mr. FitzJesse. Dopsy reddened, and exploded in a little spluttering laugh behind her napkin. Christabel looked divinely unconscious, smiling down at her boy, whose chair had been placed at the corner of the table close to his mother.
"It is a poet's privilege to worship the beautiful, Leo," said the Baron, with a self-satisfied smirk. "The old troubadour's right of allegiance to the loveliest—as old as chivalry."
"And as disreputable," said FitzJesse. "If I had been one of the knights of old, and had found a troubadour sneaking about my premises, that troubadour's head should have been through his guitar before he knew where he was—or he should have discovered that my idea of a common chord was a halter. But in our present age of ultra-refinement the social troubadour is a gentleman, and the worship of beauty one of the higher forms of culture."