"I'd make a pretty good actor, in spite of what O'Hara said. It's the only thing I like anyway. I can improvise songs, too. Listen to this impromptu, you fellows":
And he bent over the piano, still standing, and beat out a jingling accompaniment:
"I sigh for the maiden I never have seen,
I'll make her my countess whatever she's been—
Typewriter, manicure, heiress or queen,
Aged fifty or thirty or lovely eighteen,
Redundant and squatty, or scraggy and lean,
Generous spendthrift or miserly mean—
I sigh for the maiden I never have seen
Provided she's padded with wads of Long Green!"
Still singing the air he picked up a silk hat and walking-stick and began to dance, rather lightly and gracefully, his sunken, heavy-lidded eyes fixed nonchalantly on space—his nimble little feet making no sound on the floor as he swung, swayed, and capered under the electric light timing his agile steps to his own singing.
Loud applause greeted him; much hand-clapping and cries of "Good old Dankmere! Three cheers for the British peerage!"
Sir Charles looked slightly bored, sitting back in his chair and waiting for the game to recommence. Which it did with the return of the Earl who had now relieved both his intellect and his legs of an accumulated and Terpischorean incubus.
"If I was a bigger ass than I am," said the Earl, "I'd go into vaudeville and let my creditors howl."
"Did they really send you over here?" asked O'Hara, knowing that his lordship made no bones about it.
"They certainly did. And a fine mess I've made of it, haven't I? No decent girl wants me—though why, I don't know, because I'm decent enough as men go. But your newspapers make fun of me and my title—and I might as well cut away to Dankmere Tarns and let 'em pick my carcass clean."
"What's Dankmere Tarns?" asked O'Hara.