“Are they real Chinamen?” enquired Franceline in a whisper, as she passed close by one of them and met his eyes fixed on her with the appreciating glance of an outer barbarian.
“Real! To be sure they are. I imported a small cargo of them from Hong Kong, pig-tails and all, for the occasion,” replied Sir Simon.
But a twinkle in his eye, and a broad grin on the face of the genuine John Chinaman, belied this audacious assertion. Franceline laughed merrily.
“How clever of you to have invented it, and how exactly like real Chinamen they are!” she cried, intending to be complimentary to all parties; which the mandarin under consideration acknowledged by a slow bend of his skull-capped head and a movement of the left hand towards the tip of his nose, supposed to represent a native salutation.
“Bestow your commendation where it is due,” said Sir Simon; “it’s all that young gentleman’s doing,” pointing with a jerk of his head towards Clide, who had sauntered in after them. “But here comes somebody; we must be under arms to receive them.”
The baying of the bloodhounds chained in the outer court announced the arrival of a carriage; they reached the reception-room in time to hear it wheeling up the terrace.
And now the master of Dullerton Court was in his element. The tide of guests poured in quickly, and were greeted with that royal courtesy that was his especial attribute. No matter what the worries and cares of life might be elsewhere, they vanished as if by enchantment in the sunshine of Sir Simon’s hospitality. He forgot nobody; the absent ones had their tribute of regret, and he remembered the precise cause of the absence: the daughter who had an inopportune toothache, the son forced to remain in town on business, and the father pinned to his bed by the gout; Sir Simon was so sorry for each individual absentee that while he was expressing it you would have imagined this feeling must have damped his joy for the evening; but the cloud passed off when he shook hands with the next arrival, and he was radiantly happy in spite of sympathetic gout and toothache.
Mrs. de Winton seconded her host well in doing the honors. If she was a trifle stiff, it was such a graceful, well-bred stiffness that you could not quarrel with it, and she neglected no one.
“There are Mr. Langrove and the girls!” exclaimed Franceline, in high excitement, as if that inevitable spectacle were an extraordinary surprise.
“Oh! how gorgeous you are, Franceline,” was Godiva’s awe-stricken sotto voce, as if she feared that loud speech might blow away the bubble.