"I should think so. We dined at Mezzofanti's in Great Compton Street, Soho—no, it wasn't; it was Magliabecchi's—no!—Machiavelli's. And I talked such good Italian to the waiter. It was fun! And what do you think we did next? ... Give it up?" Her father nodded. "Why—we went to the Adelphi Theatre—there! And we saw 'Charley's Aunt,' and we parted intimate bosom friends. Only Euphemia is rather fussy and distant, compared to Us, and I had to stick out to make her kiss me." A slight illustration served to show how the speaker had driven a coach-and-six through the bosom-friend's shyness.
"Well," said the Baronet. "All I can say is—I wish I had been there with you. If I go to the play now—there I am, dressed in toggery and sittin' in the stalls! Lord, I remember when I was a young fellow, there was Charles Mathews and Madame Vestris ... you can't remember them...."
"Of course I can't. I was only born nineteen years ago." The Baronet, however, added more recent theatrical experiences, but only brought on himself corrections from his liege lady.
"My dear, you're quite at sea. Fancy the child recollecting Lord Dundreary and Buckstone! Why, she wasn't born or thought of!"
But when this Baronet got on the subject of his early plays and operas, he developed reminiscence in its most aggravated form. He easily outclassed Aunt Priscey on the subject of her ancestors. Her ladyship abandoned him as incorrigible, without an apology, but his daughter indulged him and sat and listened.
All things come to an end sooner or later, and reminiscence did, later. Then poor Madeline ran down in her spirits, and sat brooding over the war news. It was only a temporary sprint. Reginald and Euphemia vanished, and Jack came back.
Madeline kept all this story of the talking photograph to herself. To talk of it she would have had to tell her friend's dream, and that she had promised not to do.
She was so loyal that when a day or two later she met the formidable Miss Charlotte Bax, she kept a strict lock on her tongue, even when that lady plunged into a resumé of the dream-story as she had received it, and an abstract of her commentary on it, still waiting delivery at the Psychomorphic.
"I hoped we should meet at Mrs. Ludersdorff Priestley's," said she, "because I wanted to talk about it. Their teas are so stupid. Ethel Ludersdorff Priestley said you were coming."
"Oh yes—that was the Unfulfilled Bun-Worry. Mrs. Aiken came in to see me, and I stayed." Then, as an afterthought, "I suppose you know they've made it up?"