“My dear boy, if you will excuse me for saying so, are you not getting the Foreign Office habit of being older than your years? I hope you will not begin wearing horn spectacles while your sight is still unimpaired.”
Craven laughed and felt suddenly younger.
The two dry Martinis were brought, and the talk grew a little more lively. Braybrooke, who seldom took a cocktail, was good enough to allow it to go to his head, and became, for him, almost unbuttoned. Craven, entertained by his elderly friend’s unwonted exuberance, talked more freely and a little more intimately to him than usual, and presently alluded to the events of the previous night, and described his expedition to Soho.
“D’you know the Ristorante Bella Napoli?” he asked Braybrooke. “Vesuvius all over the walls, and hair-dressers playing Neapolitan tunes?”
Braybrooke did not, but seemed interested, for he cocked his head to one side, and looked almost volcanic for a moment over the tiny glass in his hand. Craven described the restaurant, the company, the general atmosphere, the Chianti and Toscanas, and, proceeding with artful ingenuity, at last came to his climax—Lady Sellingworth and Miss Van Tuyn in their corner with their feet on the sanded floor and a smoking dish of Risotto alla Milanese before them.
“Adela Sellingworth in Soho! Adela Sellingworth in the midst of such a society!” exclaimed the world’s governess with unfeigned astonishment. “What could have induced her—but to be sure, Beryl Van Tuyn is famous for her escapades, and for bringing the most unlikely people into them. I remember once in Paris she actually induced Madame Marretti to go to—ha—ah!”
He pulled himself up short.
“These Martinis are surely very strong!” he murmured into his beard reproachfully.
“I don’t think so.”
“My doctor tells me that all cocktails are rank poison. They set up fermentation.”