“I’ve only seen the fore-quarter and the trotter, but you see I haven’t been over the house. Did they show you the Bluebeard’s Chamber? What is there there? By Jove, it’s like Jezebel and the dogs.... But I don’t suppose they’ll have me up again. There was some chap there, and I got him by himself and told him he didn’t know what he was talking about; rotten of me, I know, but you should have heard him! Anarchist—Votes for Women—all the lot; whew!... More tea, Ruth, please——”
Lady Tasker felt the years beginning to ebb away from her again. She had remembered the hammock and the Invisible Men.
“I hope he was—English?” she murmured.
“Who?”
“The man you say you were rude to.”
“English? Yes. Why? English? Rather! No end of gas about the Empire. Said it was on a wrong basis or something. Why do you ask?”
“I only wondered.”
But Stan was perspicacious; he could see anything that was as closely thrust under his nose as is the comparative rarity of the Englishman in Hampstead. He laughed.
“Oh, that! We’re used to that. We’ve all sorts up here.... By Jove, I believe Aunt Grace has been thrown into the arms of a Jap or a nigger or something! Well, if that doesn’t put the lid on!... So of course you wondered what I meant by the fore-quarter and Jezebel and the dogs. Those are just some things they used to have.... Well, I’ll tell you what you can do about it next time, auntie. You talk to ’em about Ludlow. That shuts ’em up. Sore spot, Ludlow; they’re trying to forget about Ye Olde Englysshe Maypole, and that row with old Wynn-Jenkins, and old Griffin letting his hair grow and reciting those poems. They look at you as if it never happened. But they didn’t shut me up.”
“You seem to have been thoroughly rude,” Lady Tasker remarked.