In the old days, Mr. Perry Lite had been devoured by a passion for the Camberwell home. He had worshipped the terrace on which the pies lethargically leaned. He had adored the stuffy back-parlour, divided from the shop by a half-glass door, on which a cracked bell tinkled. The man who had dared to invade the privacy of that parlour would have found himself face to face with a fury, inflexibly set on ejection. The small bedroom above-stairs was, at that time, Mr. Lite's idea of heaven, and he considered the attic in which the servant—had there been one, which there was not—would have slept a fit receptacle for a goddess. In fact, Mr. Lite's heart sent out tendrils, which climbed, like creepers, all over the Camberwell pie-house. But in due time he had to cut the creepers down.
Either Mrs. Lite was unusually clever at making pies, buns, sweetmeats, and cakes, or Mr. Lite had extraordinary business capacity, or Fortune was determined that there should be a Bun Emperor in Britain, and that Mr. Lite looked the part better than anybody else. In any case, money came, and with it changes. The Camberwell residence was exchanged for Bayswater; Bayswater was given up, in its turn, for Oxford Street. Then followed Piccadilly, with branch establishments all over the place. And, finally, Mr. and Mrs. Lite found themselves settled in the palace near Ascot which was known far and wide to a wondering world as Ribton Marches. And it was in Ribton Marches that Mr. Lite allowed the old passion to develop into a disease. At Camberwell he had been very fond of the home. At Sunninghill he adored it with his whole heart and body, preferring it to Windsor Castle, and strong in a belief that her Most Gracious Majesty, who occasionally passed near his gates while on her afternoon carriage expeditions, sickened with envy when her royal eyes beheld the cupolas which made the roof-tree of the palace bulbous in every imaginable direction. Ribton Marches had been built according to Mr. Lite's own ideas, which took the form of a huge erection combining many of the peculiar merits of the Leicester Square Alhambra and the Crystal Palace. Wherever you expected to find stone you came upon glass; wherever you anticipated glass you came upon stone. If you looked for a flat roof, your eye met a cupola; if you glanced up in search of a cupola, you probably missed it and saw a flat roof. The palace continually "had" you. It was full of winter gardens, and in all these winter gardens there were talking parrots. The palace was crammed with echoes, and as you explored it, under the careful and most suspicious supervision of Mr. Lite, its mighty walls seemed to breathe out to you from every side such mysterious expressions as "Hallelujah! Bow-wow-wow!" "Polly, go to bed!" and "Polly very drunk; naughty Polly!" the latter statement being usually succeeded by a loud noise as of the drawing of dozens of champagne corks. There were several libraries in the palace, and several boudoirs; but the boudoirs were on the ground-floor, and the libraries were upstairs. In the picture-gallery the Dutch-oven school was well represented, and in the purple drawing-room there was a new species of orchestrion, to the hullabaloo of which Mr. and Mrs. Lite were wont to fall gently asleep each evening after dinner. A remarkable feature of the palace was the large number of machines, constructed on the penny-in-the-slot principle, which stood about in the different apartments, prepared to yield to the influence of the enquiring copper an assortment of cigars, stamps, cigarettes, surprise packets, chocolate drops, Dutch dolls, perfume squirts, luggage-labels, and other like necessaries. Of these Mr. Lite was very proud: their mechanism, which no fellow was ever able to understand, was devised by him, and was different in important respects from that of the graceful erections which have been so artistically placed in many of the more beautiful parts of England. Whenever any guests came to lunch with him—he seldom had anyone to stay the night—he would always invite them to set his machines in motion, and the disappearing pennies went to assist in the founding of the Lite Home for Elderly Bun-makers who had got past their work.
In the centre of the palace was a large hall, baronial here and there, containing a staircase which had been conveyed at a vast cost from somewhere abroad, an oak ceiling, an organ, and other necessary furniture. At the first glance this hall looked rather more suitable for the accommodation of Handel Festivals than for a simple home life. But the Bun Emperor and Empress, looking—as to size—like a couple of peas in the vast immensity of unutterable space, often took afternoon tea there in sweet domestic solitude, or sat there by the hour listening to the distant voices of the parrots resounding from the adjacent winter gardens. Other inhabitants of the palace were certain pugs—Dinah, Sam, Gog and Magog—retained by Mrs. Lite to give an air of aristocracy to the establishment; various footmen, powdered and unpowdered; and a very large and scorbutic individual, by name Mr. Harrison, who enjoyed the title of "groom of the chambers," and the advantage of doing nothing whatsoever from morning till night.
On a certain evening in June the Bun Emperor and Empress rose at about eight o'clock from their late dinner in the cedar-wood dining-parlour, decorated with the heads of stags shot by nobody knows who, engravings of popular pictures, and china from different portions of the habitable globe, and proceeded to the purple drawing-room to listen to the cooling orchestrion, whose tremendous strains so soothed their souls and stimulated their digestive processes. They went arm-in-arm, preceded by a footman, and followed by the pugs in waddling procession. The Bun Emperor was short, with exceedingly rounded contours, features resembling those of the first Napoleon, fierce dark eyes, and the gait of a man who has won a great many battles. His Empress was also short and rounded, with grey hair elaborated into many little curls about her forehead, neat features of the nut-cracker type, and, as a general rule, a slightly fatuous expression of eager self-complacency. To-night, however, her face was decorated with the flames of temper, and she gained the purple drawing-room on rather tremulous feet.
Arrived there, she sharply withdrew her hand from the Emperor's fat arm, sat down in a brocaded chair, and turned upon the respectful flunkey who had shown the way.
"Frederick," she said, "turn on the orchestrion."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And set it at 'They Never do That to Me.'"
She darted a glance at the Emperor as she said the last words.
"Yes, ma'am," replied Frederick.