Thus adjured, Mrs. Arteroyd began, as stagily as she could—
“Hullo, wheer’ye off to, Tommy?”
And Mrs. Long-Adder lay back among her silken cushions and listened, blinking sleepily through her long black lashes, the while a faint half-satiric, half-pleased expression came and went on the face which certain of her admirers called “so weirdly beautifully!” Before the second verse was ended, she rose up to her full height in a dramatic attitude of inspired resolution, while the “satin rayonnant” and the “diamanté lace” fell around her in sweeping, glorious, glittering folds. She saw her game and was prepared to play it.
“That will do!” she said. “Yes!—it has every chance of a draw. I think I can manage it!”
She moved to and fro, softly and swishingly.
“Yes! Finish it!” And through the tangles of her hair she smiled a bewildering smile. “There’s a Bazaar going to be held at the Gilded Rooms for the benefit of Tommy next week—I’ll offer to recite it there—dressed in khaki!”
“You will!” cried Mrs. Arteroyd, rapidly considering how that “weird” lady would look “in khaki,” and as rapidly deciding that she must have her own way anyhow—“You really will! And do you think that your friend, the German prince—”
“Dummer-Esel? Of course! He will do anything to please me!” said Mrs. Long-Adder—“You may be quite sure he will come and hear me. But you know you must give me a hundred guineas for the job.”
“Must I?” And Mrs. Arteroyd’s face fell a little.
“Why of course you must! You must pay me, and I shall give the money to the Fund. That’s how these things are done.”