It was a uniformed and epauletted functionary conveying the polite intimation of the management that Madame and her party must positively maintain silence during the performance, or make themselves the trouble to depart!
“Tell him we’d had enough and were just going!” commanded Mrs. Gudrun. She rose, and, followed by the Duke, Bobby Bolsover, and Teddy Candelish—most active and ubiquitous of business managers, sailed out of the box, knocking over a fauteuil and carrying a footstool away upon the surging billows of her train. “Calls herself an artist!” she said, in reference to the prima donna, upon whose trills and roulades an enraptured audience hung breathless and enthralled; “and lets herself be put about by a little thing like that! Where’s her artistic absorption, I should like to know. Why, I’ve studied Juliet in the drawing-room where Bobby and De Petoburgh were having a rat-hunt under the tables and things, and what difference did it make to my conception of the part? Not a sou. And she was a shrimp-seller at Nice! They all have that voce squillante and those thick flat ankles and those rolling black eyes like treacle-balls. Let’s go and have some supper at the Café Paris.”
Over American grilled lobster and quails Georges Sand, Bobby Bolsover’s grand notion for an advertisement, cropped up again. One may explain that it consisted in the suggestion that Mrs. Gudrun and party should electrify Paris, and subsequently London, by traveling per motor-airship from St. Cloud, rounding the Eiffel Tower in emulation of the immortal Santos, and returning to the Highfliers’ Club airship station at the Parc upon the conclusion of the feat. A friend of De Petoburgh’s, a distinguished member of the Highfliers’ Club, would undertake to lend the airship—a newly completed vessel, with basket accommodation for three. This philanthropist did not propose to share the notoriety by joining the trip, and it was to be distinctly understood that De Petoburgh was to be responsible for any expenses involved.
And Bobby Bolsover, brimming, as usual, with genuine British bravery and brandy-and-soda, was ready to assume command.
“You know the principle of a motor?” Bobby demanded, as the supper proceeded, and a collection of champagne corks, gradually amassed on the corner of the table, assumed proportions favorable to purposes of demonstration.
“Candelish knows the principle of a motor,” said De Petoburgh. “Never could learn myshelf. Too much borror!”
“One may say that there is gasoline in a receptacle,” began Teddy. “Air passing through becomes charged with gas, and comes out ready to explode. Then——”
“To explode,” agreed De Petoburgh; “absorutely correc’ dennifishion, by Ringo!”
“Don’t mind De Peto: he’s in for one of his old attacks,” said Mrs. Gudrun. “His legs have been all over the place since breakfast. Well?”
“You give a twirl to a crank,” said Bobby Bolsover.