“And you must have supper with me first,” she said, “just you and me and a few of my friends.”
“My dear Mary,” I said, “nothing would delight me more.”
“I feel a whole new world,” she said, “opening before me.”
Upon the following Sunday week, therefore, at half-past seven, I stood outside her house in Bedford Square, and the next moment I was being led upstairs by a modestly dressed parlourmaid in a white cap. Clad myself in a well-fitting morning coat with a hand-knitted waistcoat and a velveteen tie, I found Miss Moonbeam with her men and women companions eagerly awaiting me in evening dress. About a dozen in all, they included the naval officer and two young men, whom she introduced as her brothers, while there were several females who greeted me with deference, but whose chests, as I pointed out to them, were inadequately covered. They begged my pardon, however, with the not unreasonable excuse that the standards I had set them were not easily reached, and at my urgent request, Miss Moonbeam provided them with napkins to make good the deficiency. This having been attended to, we then went downstairs to a capacious dining-room on the ground floor, where an excellent meal was ushered in with some admirably prepared chicken soup.
Followed by fish, partridges and salad, bowls of stewed fruit and Devonshire cream, it was concluded with a savoury consisting of stuffed eggs mounted on triangular pieces of toast, and I was gratified to observe that, apart from water, the only other beverage was Portugalade. It was again, to my annoyance, however, served in wine glasses, although Miss Moonbeam immediately apologized, pouring out a tumblerful for me with her own hand, just as I was beginning my second partridge. Nor did I find it any less agreeable than upon my first acquaintance with it at the theatre, and indeed I had seldom experienced such a sense of warmth and comfort as it very quickly began to endow me with. Peculiarly attractive to the nostril, it was no less grateful to the tongue, while upon its downward passage, it lent an extraordinary balm to a naturally irritable digestive system.
Nay, it did more, for as it enriched the blood mounting to an always responsive brain, I found myself the vehicle of a delightful flow of new and most valuable ideas. I say valuable, and this was indeed the case, but many of them were also outstandingly humorous, and time after time I was obliged to call for silence so that none of those present might fail to hear them. I was glad to perceive, too, that they met with an instant response both in laughter and rapt attention, and I was soon convinced that, beneath the trappings of guilt, there was a spark of goodness in most of my listeners. Nor had Miss Moonbeam, who kept my tumbler filled, ever appeared to me to be so well worth saving, and when I accidentally upset my fruit, she was solicitude’s self as she wiped my waistcoat.
By a second mischance, too, I spilt my coffee, which was served at the supper-table just before we rose; and on this occasion also she was instantly at hand to remove the stains from the upper part of my trousers. Then we rose for grace, which I proposed should be sung, and into the singing of which I threw my whole being; and when I found myself swaying a little, owing to the consequent fatigue, both she and the naval officer kindly supported me. Indeed so acute was the resulting vertigo that I was not only obliged for a moment to sit down, but I found myself only too glad to rely on their aid as we descended the front steps to the waiting vehicles. Glad as I was, however, they both assured me that they were gladder even than I was, while the others assured us, as we glanced across the pavement, that they were gladder even than we were. In fact we were all glad, and although I had been a little perturbed by the physical disability to which I have referred, I was soon restored by the night air, the motion of the vehicle, and the prospects of the meeting. Moreover the naval officer had brought with him a large bottle of the Portugalade, and a further draught of this at once completed, and indeed augmented, my sense of well-being.
“Yes, it ought to be grand,” I said, “a grand meeting, the grandest meeting we’ve ever had,” and I remember putting my head out of the right-hand window and inviting the passers-by to come and join us.
“Yes, there’s no doubt of it,” I said, “it’ll be a grand meeting, a grand, grand meeting, grander and grander.”
“As grand as grand,” said the naval officer.