“We must have some fun, hey, wife, while Ursula’s here? We might give a dinner-party, and show the grandees what’s what.”
“But the grandees don’t come to our dinner-parties,” objected Mevrouw Mopius.
“No, they don’t, hang ’em. But they’d hear from the people who do. Your Dominé Pock knows ’em all. We’ll have Pock to dinner. He’s always asking for money for something or other, but he’s a good judge of victuals. Trust a parson to be that, and a poor judge of wine. At least the Evangelicals. And he’ll tell every one I’ve the best venison in the city. I get my venison from Brussels, Ursula, and it’s better, they’ll all say, than the Baron van Trossart’s, who shoots his himself.”
“The Baron van Trossart!” said Ursula. “That is the guardian of the Van Helmonts’ cousin, Helen, the heiress. I am to go to a party there. Gerard promised me an invitation.”
Mynheer Mopius’s face grew very dark.
“Look here,” he said, “are you staying with me or in barracks? If with me, you must allow me to amuse you. I won’t hear anything about your Barons Gerard. And I won’t have nothing to say to them.”
“Gerard isn’t the Baron,” replied Ursula, hotly. “That’s his father. Not that it matters.”
“No, I shouldn’t think it did. I won’t hear anything about them. What did you say the father’s name was?”
“Theodore, Baron van Helmont van Horstwyk en de Horst,” rolled forth Ursula, proudly.
“Yes, poor Roderick likes that sort of thing. Is ‘the Horst’ the name of the house? Is it grander than this?”