"I wish I could, Aunt Alice," said Susan sweetly, cutting the cake. "You must ask Miss Bowater."
"Please, Miss Monnerie," drawled Fanny.
"Whether or not," said Mrs Monnerie crisply, "I beseech you, children, don't quarrel about it. There is our beloved Sovereign on her throne; and there the last innocent little victim in its cradle; and there's the old sun waggishly illuminating the whole creaking stage. Blind beggar and dog, Toby, artists, authors, parsons, statesmen—heart and everything else, or everything else but heart, on sleeve—and all on show—every one of them—at something a look. No, my dear, there's only one private life, the next: and, according to some accounts, that will be more public than ever. And so twirls the Merry-go-Round."
Her voice relapsed, as it were, into herself again, and she drew in her lips. She looked about her as if in faint surprise; and in returning to its usual expression, it seemed to me that her countenance had paused an instant in an exceedingly melancholy condition. Perhaps she had caught the glint of sympathy in my eye.
"But isn't that all choice, Mrs Monnerie?" I leaned forward to ask. "And aren't some people what one might call conspicuous, simply because they are really and truly, as it were, superior to other people? I don't mean better—just superior."
"I think, Mrs Monnerie," murmured Fanny deprecatingly, "she's referring to that 'ad infinitum' jingle—about the fleas, you know. Or was it Dr Watts, Midgetina?"
"Never mind about Dr Watts," said Mrs Monnerie flatly. "The point from which we have strayed, my dear, is that even if you were not born great, you were born exquisite; and now here's this Angélique rigmarole——" Her face creased up into its old good-humoured facetiousness: "Was it three inches, Miss Bowater?"
"Four, Mrs Monnerie," lipped Fanny suavely.
"Four! pooh! Still, that's what they say; half a head or more, my dear, more exquisite! Perfect nonsense, of course. It's physically impossible. These Radical newspapers! And the absinthe, too." Her small black-brown eyes roamed round a little emptily. Absinthe! was that a Fanny story? "But there, my child," she added easily, "you shall see for yourself. We dine with the Padgwick-Steggals; and then go on together. So that's settled. It will be my first travelling circus since I was a child. Most amusing: if the lion doesn't get out, and there's none of those horrible accidents on the trapeze one goes in hope to see. By the way, Miss Bowater, your letter was posted?"