‘Yes, I think so.’
‘How many children shall we have?’
‘Ten?’
‘Albert! You can consider that our engagement is at an end.’
‘About four, really. Of course, you may have three lots of triplets like Lady Prague in the Consequences.’
‘You do love me, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. How many more times?’
‘As many as I like. You know I’m very glad I came to Scotland.’
‘So am I. Come on, funny, d’you realize it’s past one; we must go to bed or there’ll be a hideous scandal.’
14
The days which followed were spent by Jane and Albert in a state of idyllic happiness. It was quite easy to keep their engagement a secret from all but the Monteaths as the heartier members of the house party were so seldom indoors; when there was no shooting to occupy them they would be fishing or playing tennis. The evenings were no longer brightened by the inevitable ‘Lists’; nobody dared to thwart Lady Prague by refusing to play, but at least Albert, who could bear it no longer, read out a list of diseases so shocking and nauseating that the affronted peeress took herself off to the study and the game was never resumed.
One day they were all having tea in the great hall. This was an important meal for the shooters, who ate poached eggs and scones and drank out of enormous cups reminiscent of a certain article of bedroom china ware. Albert, who detested the sight of so much swilling, seldom attended it, preferring to have a cup of weak China tea or a cocktail sent into the billiard-room, but on this occasion he had come in to ask Walter something and had stayed on talking to Jane.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Mr Buggins to the company at large, ‘there are to be some very good Highland games at Invertochie which is about thirty miles from here. I have been talking to the general and he sees no reason why we shouldn’t all go over to them. There are two cars, his own and Craig’s Rolls-Royce, so there’ll be plenty of room if everyone would like to come. We think it would be advisable to take a picnic luncheon which we could eat on the way at a very well-known beauty spot called the Corbie’s Egg.’
There was a murmur of assent and ‘That will be lovely,’ from the assembled guests.
‘The Corbie,’ went on Mr Buggins, ‘is the local name for a crow. It is not known how that particular mountain came to be called the Corbie’s Egg, but the name is an ancient one: I came across it once in a sixteenth-century manuscript.’
Mr Buggins’s audience began to fade away. The ‘grown-ups,’ as Albert called them, were frankly bored by folklore, which, it is only fair to add, was already well known to them, they had all been fellow-guests with Mr Buggins before. The others, who had not, politely listened to a long and rather dreary account of how he, personally, was inclined to think that sacrifices might have taken place on the mountain at some prehistoric date, first of human beings, then, when people were becoming more humane, of animals, and finally the whole thing having degenerated into mere superstition, of a Corbie’s Egg.
‘I do hope you will all come to the games,’ he added rather wistfully. ‘Of course, I know you don’t really much like that sort of thing, but I feel that it would be a great pity for you to leave the Highlands without having seen this typical aspect of the national life. And it would make my day very much pleasanter if you came. We could all pack into the Rolls and the others could drive with the general in his Buick.’
Mr Buggins had so evidently been thinking it all out and was so pathetically anxious for them to go, that the Monteaths, Albert and Jane, who had each inwardly been planning a happy day without the grown-ups, were constrained to say that there was nothing they would enjoy so much, that they adored picnics, and could hardly wait to see the Corbie’s Egg, let alone the Highland games.
‘And what games do they play?’ asked Albert.
‘Actually, in the usual sense of the word, no games. It is what you would call in the South, sports.’ (Mr Buggins identified himself so much with the North that he was apt to forget that he also was a mere Englishman. He had once seriously contemplated adding his grandmother’s maiden name to his own and calling himself Forbes-Buggins.) ‘The programme consists of dancing, piping, tossing the caber, and such things. The chieftains of the various neighbouring clans act as judges. It is all most interesting.’
‘It must be,’ said Albert. ‘I long to see the chieftains.’
At dinner the subject was once more discussed at some length, and it was finally decided that the whole party should go, starting punctually at half-past twelve; and Lady Prague, who to Sally’s great relief had taken upon herself all questions of housekeeping, gave the necessary orders for a picnic luncheon.
The next morning at twelve o’clock Albert had not put in an appearance, and kind Mr Buggins, knowing his customary lateness and aware that Lady Prague and General Murgatroyd wait for no man, went to his bedroom to see if he had awakened.
Albert was sitting on the edge of his bed, wearing a pair of exquisite sprigged pyjamas. A gramophone blared out ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’; the whole room smelt strongly of gardenias. He stopped the gramophone and said:
‘This is a great pleasure, Mr Buggins. So early, too; your energy never ceases to amaze me. I am in a state of intense excitement. Look what I received this morning from a friend in London.’ He held out a Victorian glass paper-weight.
‘Look into it carefully.’
Mr Buggins did so, and was immediately rewarded by the sight of Gladstone’s memorable features.
‘Now,’ said Albert excitedly, ‘turn it round just a little.’
Mr Buggins obeyed, and lo and behold! Mr Gladstone changed before his
