"My dear George!"
The unaffected mistrust of his expression set me laughing.
"You needn't be anxious," I told him. "They're new-comers to London——"
"And want to nobble the place!" he growled. "I know the type, George. Climbing, climbing.... They're beer, aren't they. I dislike brewers."
"I don't suppose they'll ask you to buy any."
"More honest of them if they did. A brewer's bad, but a brewer who's ashamed of his brewing...."
"Are you going to invite them or are you not?" I interrupted.
Bertrand sighed like a furnace.
"Make it one of our Dull Evenings," he begged resignedly. "Really dull; wipe off all old scores. You can ask Ashwell, and Lady Ullswater, she'll be very helpful to them, and—oh, I'll leave it in your hands. Give me somebody tolerable on either side."
The dinner took place some weeks later in the early part of May and for a Thursday, and a designedly Dull Evening, was quite bearable. I took in Sonia and had Sally Farwell on my left; her mother, Lady Marlyn, went in with my uncle. I have forgotten how the others sorted themselves out, but conversation was maintained at an even flow, and no one seemed in an undue hurry to leave. And to Bertrand or any one trained by him to look dispassionately on at "the great movement of life," there was a quarter scene from the Human Comedy being played round his own table. The actors steadied to their pose as the butler cried their names. I observed that the Daintons had wasted no time since we met at Carteret Lodge: they were blasés and overdriven with the wearing life of Society.