"Oh," he said. "I'll be there, mounting guard."
*****
The Duchess was lodged in a ramshackle way over a shop. She was not particular. After hiring all the stabling that was to be had in Melton, she had packed herself into a few odd rooms, approached by a dark entry and a narrow stair. It made her feel, she said, like an eagle.
But sometimes her hospitality outdid her accommodation. On the night of the ball she had asked as many people as could be squeezed into her dining-room; all intimate enough not to mind rubbing elbows; and dinner was a scramble.
"The youngest," she proposed, "shall sit with his back to the door, and duck when the plates are handed in over his head.... Do be careful. I put a little man there last year, but when the door opened he used to chuck up his head like a horse, and smashed no end of china."
Having settled this, she threw up a window and rang a bell violently up and down.
"That is for dinner," she said. "It has to be cooked outside, and my people dawdle so. Would you believe it, I was ten minutes ringing for my maid when I came in from hunting. She lodges a few doors higher up, and I had quite a crowd in the street."
"I remember," said Kilgour, "last time I dined with you, one or two bets were laid as to what was happening to the soup in the street below."
"Accidents do happen," she acknowledged. "It isn't quite true, however, that I stuck out my head once and caught them scooping up the sauce."
Susan, wedged in a corner between Kilgour and another equally massive person, was puzzled by the face of a woman opposite, who was smiling at her.