‘Well, Davey, have your red meal now and your white meal for breakfast,’ said Uncle Matthew. ‘I’ve opened some Mouton Rothschild, and I know how much you like that – I opened it specially for you.’
‘Oh, it is too bad,’ said Davey, ‘because I happen to know that there are kippers for breakfast, and I do so love them. What a ghastly decision. No! it must be an egg now, with a little hock. I could never forgo the kippers, so delicious, so digestible, but, above all, so full of proteins.’
‘Kippers,’ said Bob, ‘are brown.’
‘Brown counts as red. Surely you can see that.’
But when a chocolate cream, in generous supply, but never quite enough when the boys were at home, came round, it was seen to count as white. The Radletts often had cause to observe that you could never entirely rely upon Davey to refuse food, however unwholesome, if it was really delicious.
Aunt Sadie was making heavy weather with Sir Leicester. He was full of boring herbaceous enthusiasms, and took it for granted that she was too.
‘What a lot you London people always know about gardens,’ she said. ‘You must talk to Davey, he is a great gardener.’
‘I am not really a London person,’ said Sir Leicester, reproachfully. ‘I work in London, but my home is in Surrey.’
‘I count that,’ Aunt Sadie said, gently but firmly, ‘as the same.’
The evening seemed endless. The Kroesigs obviously longed for bridge, and did not seem to care so much for racing demon when it was offered as a substitute. Sir Leicester said he had had a tiring week, and really should go to bed early.
‘Don’t know how you chaps can stand it,’ said Uncle Matthew, sympathetically. ‘I was saying to the bank manager at Merlinford only yesterday, it must be the hell of a life fussing about with other blokes’ money all day, indoors.’
Linda went to ring up Lord Merlin, who had just returned from abroad. Tony followed her, they were gone a long time, and came back looking flushed and rather self-conscious.
The next morning, as we were hanging about in the hall waiting for the kippers, which had already announced themselves with a heavenly smell, two breakfast trays were seen going upstairs, for Sir Leicester and Lady Kroesig.
‘No, really, that beats everything, dammit,’ said Uncle Matthew, ‘I never heard of a man having breakfast in bed before.’ And he looked wistfully at his entrenching tool.
He was slightly mollified, however, when they came downstairs, just before eleven, all ready to go to church. Uncle Matthew was a great pillar of the church, read the lessons, chose the hymns, and took round the bag, and he liked his household to attend. Alas, the Kroesigs turned out to be blasted idolaters, as was proved when they turned sharply to the east during the creed. In short, they were of the company of those who could do no right, and sighs of relief echoed through the house when they decided to catch an evening train back to London.
‘Tony is Bottom to Linda, isn’t he?’ I said, sadly.
Davey and I were walking through Hen’s Grove the next day. Davey always knew what you meant, it was one of the nice things about him.
‘Bottom,’ he said sadly. He adored Linda.
‘And nothing will wake her up?’
‘Not before it’s too late, I fear. Poor Linda, she has an intensely romantic character, which is fatal for a woman. Fortunately for them, and for all of us, most women are madly terre à terre, otherwise the world could hardly carry on.’
Lord Merlin was braver than the rest of us, and said right out what he thought. Linda went over to see him and asked him.
‘Are you pleased about my engagement?’ to which he replied:
‘No, of course not. Why are you doing it?’
‘I’m in love,’ said Linda proudly.
‘What makes you think so?’
‘One doesn’t think, one knows,’ she said.
‘Fiddlesticks.’
‘Oh, you evidently don’t understand about love, so what’s the use of talking to you.’
Lord Merlin got very cross, and said that neither did immature little girls understand about love.
‘Love,’ he said, ‘is for grown-up people, as you will discover one day. You will also discover that it has nothing to do with marriage. I’m all in favour of you marrying soon, in a year or two, but for God’s sake, and all of our sakes, don’t go and marry a bore like Tony Kroesig.’
‘If he’s such a bore, why did you ask him to stay?’
‘I didn’t ask him. Baby brought him, because Cecil had ’flu and couldn’t come. Besides, I can’t guess you’ll go and marry every stopgap I have in my house.’
‘You ought to be more careful. Anyhow, I can’t think why you say Tony’s a bore, he knows everything.’
‘Yes, that’s exactly it, he does. And what about Sir Leicester? And have you seen Lady Kroesig?’
But the Kroesig family was illuminated for Linda by the great glow of perfection which shone around Tony, and she would hear nothing against them. She parted rather coldly from Lord Merlin, came home, and abused him roundly. As for him, he waited to see what Sir Leicester was giving her for a wedding present. It was a pigskin dressing-case with dark tortoiseshell fittings and her initials on them in gold. Lord Merlin sent her a morocco one double the size, fitted blonde tortoiseshell, and instead of initials, LINDA in diamonds.
He had embarked upon an elaborate series of Kroesig teases of which this was to be the first.
The arrangements for the wedding did not go smoothly. There was trouble without end over settlements. Uncle Matthew, whose estate provided a certain sum of money for younger children, to be allocated
