“Nothing,” said Robin with spirit. “Without the word of a lie you’re a hopeless crew.”
“Do you remember a conversation we had years ago on the slope of Little Mount Silver?”
“Yes.”
“So do I. And here I am still without a job. I daresay it would have been a good thing if Uncle G. had lived to chortle at our bankruptcy. It would take a major disaster to cure us. Perhaps when the war comes it will do the trick. Kill, as they say, or cure.”
“I expect you’ll manage to slope through a war in the same old way. But don’t you call this a major disaster?”
“I suppose so. But you know, Robin, somehow or another, although I feel very bothered and frightened, I don’t, inside myself, think that any of us are bound for the dock.”
“Oh don’t. How can you gossip away about it!”
“It’s not affectation. I ought to be in a panic but I’m not. Not really.”
The taxi carried them into Hyde Park Corner. Roberta looked up through the window and saw the four heroic horses snorting soundlessly against a night sky, grandiloquently unaware of the less florid postures of some bronze artillerymen down below.
“We shan’t be long now,” said Henry. “I can’t tell you how frightful this house is. Uncle G.’s idea of the amenities was a mixture of elephantine ornament and incredible hardship. The servants are not allowed to use electricity once the gentry are in bed so they creep about by candlelight. It’s true, I promise you. The house was done up by my grandfather on the occasion of his marriage and since then has merely amassed a continuous stream of hideous objets d’art.”