“Mr. Brentin, who’s bought the yacht; the American at the ‘Victoria.’ ”
“Well, all I can say is,” said my sister, after a pause, “you’re rather a lame crew. Why, Teddy Parsons alone is enough to ruin anything!”
“Yes, I know,” I groaned, “but what is one to do? I’ve been all over the country seeing men, but they’re all much too frightened. We’re an utterly scratch lot, I know, but Brentin and I must do the best we can with the material and trust to luck.”
“That you most certainly will have to do,” said my sister, with conviction.
“Why can’t you come with us,” I urged, “and be the mascot of the party? We must have some one of the kind, if only to chaperon Miss Rybot.”
“Dear me, who’s Miss Rybot?”
“Arthur Masters’s young woman, without whom he won’t stir.”
Now my sister Muriel is like a good many other highly respectable Englishwomen: she is a most faithful wife and devoted mother, but she doesn’t care in any particular degree about her husband, and is only too glad to welcome anything in the way of honest excitement, if only to break the monotony of home life. And here was excitement for her, indeed, and, properly regarded, of the most irreproachably honest description.
It flattered, too, her love of adventure, for which she had never had much outlet in Medworth Square. Where we Blackers get our love of adventure from, by-the-way, I don’t quite know, unless it be from my mother’s father, who fought at Waterloo, and died a very old gentleman, a Knight of Windsor; but we certainly both of us have it very strongly, as all good English people should.
To cut a long story short, for I must really be getting on, my sister finally agreed to come, if only as chaperon to Miss Rybot. Like the rest of us, she had never been to Monte Carlo, having been hitherto forbidden by her husband; but now she said she would insist, and allege as a reason the necessity of her presence for keeping her only brother from ruining himself at the tables.