The date was chosen to please her, and it was changed three times, but at last it was fixed, and George got some cards printed that he had designed himself. They were quite white and plain, but with a knowing red splotch in one corner, which signified George’s passionate Italian nature. I was in the study when the first dozens of packets came, with Miss Mander, and she undid them. Secretaries always take the right to open everything!
“My Goodness!” she said.
“Isn’t it right?” I asked, getting hold of it, but when I had looked at it I was no wiser, for I couldn’t see what was wrong. There it was, written out very nicely, “Mr. Vero-Taylor At Home. Wednesday the twenty-first,” and the address in the corner, and all those rules about the dominos, and that was all.
“Oh, dear darling Christina,” I begged, deadly curious, “do tell me what is wrong with that? I cannot guess.”
“It’s just as well, perhaps,” she said. “Preserve your sublime ignorance, my dear child, as long as you can.”
And not another word could I get out of her! I suppose she calls that being loyal to her employer.
I told Ben, and he said he knew, and what was more, he would go one better. He got hold of one of the cards, and altered it. And then it was Mr. Vero-Taylor and Lady Scilly At Home! I think that was absurd, for though Lady Scilly meddles in all our affairs, she doesn’t quite live here yet! and Mother does, and what’s more, Mother never goes out at all except to take a servant’s character, or scold the butcher, or something of the sort, so she is really the one at home! Christina took it from him, and looked at it, and I’ll swear I saw her smile before she tore it up. So Ben had me there, for he still wouldn’t tell me what was wrong with the first card.
We began to write in the names of the people. It took us a whole morning, Ben, Ariadne, Miss Mander and I. I offered to help, and really, though I write rather badly, I can spell better than any of them, but I don’t believe they valued my help very much, and only gave me a card now and then to keep me quiet. There were six young men that Ariadne wanted asked—six, no less, if you please—and she’s only been out six months! And she kept trying to force them on George, same as you do cards in a card trick! But he didn’t take any notice, and kept walking up and down the room mentioning the names of all sorts of absurd people that nobody wanted, except himself. It was really going to be a very smart party; there were to be detectives and reporters, and what more can you have than that? All the countesses and dukes and so on were to come, of course, but I must say I had thought that George knew a great many more of them; he managed to scratch up so few, considering all the talk there had been about it. I kept saying, “Oh, do give me a Countess to ask. You give me all the plain people to do.”
Somehow or other, George did not seem to be pleased, and he sent us all away after fifty had been written.
Next day, he told us that he had thought it all out, and he was going to do an original thing, and instead of sending out cards for his party, he was going to announce it in the pages of The Bittern, and that all his friends, reading it, must consider themselves bidden. Mother said how should she know how many to prepare for? I suppose the answer to that depends on the number of friends George has got, and whether they know that he considers them his friends. For think how awkward to assume that you were a friend and had a place laid for you, and then to come and find that you were only an acquaintance. I suggested that the real friends should have a hot sit-down supper, with wine, while the acquaintances should only go to a buffet and have cold pressed beef and lemonade. There should be a password, Hot with, and cold without, and they roared when I told them this, but I didn’t see why. Then the party would really be of some use, for after it people would know where they were! But how about the newspaper people? They couldn’t call themselves friends, or even acquaintances, so they wouldn’t be able to come at all, and what would George do then? I said all this, which seems to me very sensible, but no one noticed it. And the detectives! They have to be paid for coming, surely, and I’d rather see them than any of the others. “If they don’t come the party will be spoilt for me,” I said to Christina.