"He must say what he thinks, you know," said Lady Otterburn. "We are all going to play at that as long as we are together. Anybody who is convicted of an insincere speech is to pay half a crown to the hospital fund. Here is the box. It contains a contribution from Edward, who told Lady Griselda that she was not at all late when she came down five minutes ago. Edward, take Aunt Sarah in to dinner. She has kept us waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour."
"Have I got into a company of lunatics?" inquired Aunt Sarah, as she took her nephew's arm.
Larger Image
"THERE WAS A REGULAR HUBBUB OF CONVERSATION ROUND THE DINNER-TABLE."
No member of the party with the exception of Aunt Sarah had reached middle-age. Most of the men were contemporaries of Otterburn's, the years of whose pilgrimage were thirty. Some of them were married and had their wives with them, but the majority were unattached, and there were several girls, some English and some American. Otterburn's grouse-moors were the ostensible excuse for their finding themselves collected at Castle Gide, but they were so well mixed that they would probably have succeeded in enjoying themselves even if there had been no shooting to occupy the days. There was a regular hubbub of conversation round the dinner-table on this first evening, and loud peals of laughter, rising above the din and clatter of twenty tongues all moving at once, seemed to indicate that Lady Otterburn's game was adding to the gaiety of the occasion.
"No," said a demure young lady, in answer to a request from her neighbour. "I will not play accompaniments for you after dinner. It is quite true, as you say, that I read music extraordinarily well. I have always politely denied it before, but I know I do. Your singing, however, is so distasteful to me that I am sorry I cannot oblige you."
"I have got a good voice," said her neighbour, "and I have studied under the best masters."
"You have not profited by your studies," replied the lady; "and your voice, so far from being good, is very thin and of no quality whatsoever."