‘Your brother appears to have given the family the slip. They would like to know where he is.’
‘Oh, but I know where he is. He’s in Holland, staying with Grandma Binnen and the awful aunts.’
‘He called on them, certainly, but left them for an unknown destination,’ said Laura.
‘And, in any case, they are now in England,’ added Dame Beatrice.
‘But he went over there to give a last sitting for that silly bust and that idiotic flower,’ exclaimed Binnie. ‘If he isn’t over here with the family, where is he? He hasn’t any friends over there and he hasn’t any money for lodgings. What does Granduncle van Zestien think about it?’
Laura glanced at Dame Beatrice, who replied:
‘He is ill and has taken your brother’s defection very badly.’
‘You mean he’s disinherited him,’ said Binnie, with another flash of the acumen she occasionally and unexpectedly displayed. ‘That’s the nub of it, isn’t it? Oh, well, that means Bernardo will be reinstated, so that the sooner I reinstate myself with Bernardo the better it will be for all concerned. I only wish I knew how to do it without actually climbing down.’
‘Well! The little gold-digger!’ exclaimed Laura, as she and her employer took their seats at a table for two at dinner. ‘Makes you wonder whether she chucked poor old Bernardo with an eye to settling down to housekeep for Florian, who hated the engagement anyway.’
Dame Beatrice did not play to this gambit. She appeared to be studying the menu. Neither did she return to the subject during dinner. They retired early and Laura was up at seven on the following morning and out of the hotel by half-past. It was her custom to take an early walk if the countryside seemed to justify this exercise. Upon her return she ran into Binnie, who was taking the air on the tennis courts which fronted her parents’ hotel.
‘Oh, hullo,’ said the daughter of the house. ‘Good-morning! Have you been for a walk? If you had let me know, I’d have come with you. I expect you’re ready for breakfast. Dame Beatrice had hers half-an-hour ago, and now she’s writing some letters or something. I’ve had my breakfast, too, but I can come and gossip to you while you have yours, if you like.’
‘I never talk at breakfast,’ said Laura, alarmed. ‘That’s why Dame B. and I always breakfast separately.’
Both these statements were divorced from the truth, but, to Laura’s relief, they were instrumental in fobbing off Binnie, who looked disappointed, and said moodily,
‘Oh, well, if you don’t want me, I’ll go into the office and type out the menu for lunch. You’re staying for lunch, I suppose?’
Truthfully, (this time), Laura replied that she had not the faintest idea. Thankfully she went in to breakfast, at which, famishingly hungry, she consumed fruit juice, porridge, poached egg on finnan haddie, bacon and fried potatoes, bannocks, butter, Dundee marmalade and three cups of coffee. Greatly restored, she joined Dame Beatrice, whom she discovered in the lounge, and asked when they were proposing to leave.
‘Not today, at any rate,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I have sent to Mr Bernardo Rose to join us here. Until I receive a reply from him, I am afraid that we are obliged to stay.’
‘Good-o,’ said Laura. ‘I like it here. I do wish we weren’t quite so supersaturated with Binnie, though. She gets on my nerves. All the same, there’s more in the wretched kid than meets the eye. Wish I could stand her, but I can’t.’
‘Not only punctuality, but also patience, is the politeness of princes, child.’
Bernardo arrived three days later, having made the journey (in one hop from his London home, as he expressed it) as soon as he could make arrangements about his work.
‘Work?’ said Laura. Binnie, who had openly flouted the young man when he arrived by pointedly handing over the register to the official receptionist, replied:
‘Oh, yes, he works for his father, my uncle Sigismund Rose. You met him and Auntie Maarte in Norfolk. They’re diamond merchants, same as Granduncle. That’s why I know Bernardo got my ring on the cheap, and that’s one of the reasons why I threw it back at him. I think people ought to
Dame Beatrice replied that she had never looked at the matter in that light, but that she could see there was something in what Binnie said.
‘It’s not as though he couldn’t afford it,’ Binnie went on. ‘He’s got plenty of money. Of course, I’d be glad to marry into Granduncle’s fortune. I’m not saying I wouldn’t. And I would like…’ At this point she burst into tears.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Of course you would, and I think it will come about. Mr Bernardo is a reasonable young man.’
‘Although whether he’s picked the right girl,’ said Laura, ‘is anybody’s guess, and mine would probably be wrong. I hope so, anyway, for both their sakes.’
‘You do not think they would make a happy couple?’ Dame Beatrice enquired.
‘I should think he’d murder Binnie long before the first baby came,’ said Laura. Bernardo joined them for cocktails. Binnie chose that evening to act as barmaid.
‘One sherry, (dry), one whisky undiluted, one lemon shandy because I never drink wine or spirits, and thank you miss,’ said Bernardo, smiling into the eyes of his erstwhile beloved.
‘Oh, Bernie darling!’ wailed Binnie, drooping towards him over the bar counter.
‘Now, now, come, come! You can’t do that there here,’ said Bernardo reasonably. ‘People will think I’ve refused to make an honest woman of you, or something.’
True to form, Binnie turned a hiccupping sob into a sudden giggle and handed him a small tray on which to place the drinks he had ordered. She poured them out, dried her eyes on the cloth which was used to wipe the bar counter and then drew some beer for herself and emptied the rest of the bottle of lemonade into it. She picked up the glass.
