"The ladies have gone up to dress, George," said Dainton. "We shall find everyone else in the billiard-room. If you'd care for a drink——"
He hurried on ahead, hardly giving me time to shed my coat and cap, for all the world like a trusted old family servant making me at home in his master's absence. The impression was not altogether a capricious fancy: I remember a ball at Crowley Court where the stately wife of a newly honoured manufacturing chemist whispered loudly to her host, "Sir Zachary and Lady Smithe. Smithe, my man, not Smith, mind."
In the billiard-room we found Loring and Summertown perfunctorily practising fancy cannons, while Valentine Arden ostentatiously slumbered at full length on a divan. Tea was long past, dinner some way ahead; and, as Arden complained, he hadn't tasted a cocktail since leaving London.
"You may not know it, Raney," yawned Loring as Sir Roger closed the door behind us and hurried away to order whisky and soda, "but you've saved my life. Another ten minutes of Crabtree! It only shows the folly of staying in other people's houses. With the best intentions in the world they spring disquieting surprises on you. Really, after a certain episode not a thousand miles from—shall we say?—House of Steynes last autumn, I thought I should be safe in coming here. The rising generation beats me, and as for poor Valentine——"
Arden roused at sound of his own name.
"They offered one curried lobster for breakfast," he proclaimed, tremulous with indignation; "there were only two kinds of chutney, and no Bombay duck. One cannot eat curry without Bombay duck."
He relapsed into exhausted slumber, and Summertown seized upon O'Rane.
"Look here, young fellow, my lad," he said, "I'm properly in the soup. You remember the bilge my lady mother's been talking about my seeing more of the world...."
Arden stirred in his sleep and opened one eye.
"The desire of a mother that her son shall see rather more of the world," he observed, "not infrequently coincides with an ambition to see rather less of her son."