As Bobby had not yet put in an appearance, Lady Bobbin said that they would not wait, and began dinner without him. Half-way through the meal he strolled into the dining-room in day clothes and said ‘How are you?’ in his most affected manner to Paul, winking at him with the eye away from Lady Bobbin. ‘Sorry, mother,’ he added as he took his place at the head of the table.
‘Is it quite necessary to be so unpunctual for meals?’ inquired Lady Bobbin in her most rasping tone of voice. ‘And I think I have mentioned before that I insist upon you dressing for dinner. I can remember my dear father telling me that even when he was on one of his most strenuous safaris in the African bush he never omitted to dress for dinner.’
‘Well, but we’re not in the African bush now, are we?’ said Bobby with his mouth full.
There seemed to be no reply to this piece of logic. Lady Bobbin turned to Paul with an air of effusion obviously intended to accentuate her displeasure with her son and said, ‘You come here at a very unlucky moment, Mr Fisher; our hunting has been stopped by an outbreak of foot and mouth disease on the edge of my country. I am glad to say that we are allowed to hack about in this district, but of course, nothing can make up for the season being spoilt in this way, just when the weather is so beautifully open too. It is really heartbreaking. You do hunt, I fancy?’
‘No, no,’ said Paul, who was bent on making a good impression; ‘I hack, though.’
Lady Bobbin took this to mean that the tutor had no clothes for hunting, and nodded graciously.
‘And of course,’ Paul went on, ‘I love to see others hunt. But how rotten about the foot and mouth – so wretched for the poor cows, too.’
‘What cows?’
‘The ones with feet and mouths.’
‘Oh, the cows,’ said Lady Bobbin vaguely. ‘But they’re all right. The Government slaughters them at once; humanely, too. The terrible thing about it is the way it stops hunting. Of course, it’s quite obvious to me that it’s all done by the Bolsheviks.’
‘Now, really, Mother, what do you mean by that?’ said Bobby impatiently.
‘Florence Prague was saying only yesterday, and I am perfectly certain she is right, that the Bolsheviks are out to do anything they can which will stop hunting. They know quite well, the devils, that every kind of sport, and especially hunting, does more to put down Socialism than all the speeches in the world, so, as they can’t do very much with that R.S.V.P. nonsense, they go about spreading foot and mouth germs all over the countryside. I can’t imagine why the Government doesn’t take active steps; it’s enough to make one believe that they are in the pay of these brutes themselves. Too bad, you know.’
‘Never mind,’ said Bobby, throwing a look of mock despair in the direction of Paul, who sat open-mouthed at this theory; ‘the great thing is that we are allowed to hack.’
‘Yes, you can hack to within a radius of five miles of Woodford. Oh, I don’t fancy you will want for occupation; the golf course is in excellent order, I believe. You are very fond of golf, I hear, Mr Fisher?’
‘Yes, indeed, I love nothing more than golf. In fact, I am devoted to everything in the way of open-air sports, even hiking and biking. So long as I can be out of doors, away from stuffy houses, I am perfectly happy.’
Lady Bobbin looked at him with approval. ‘Then you will like the life here, Mr Fisher. It is a pity you do not hunt, but you can ride all day; there are plenty of horses to be exercised while the foot and mouth continues.’
Bobby, who hated to be ignored by anybody, even his mother, for long, now tried to ingratiate himself by asking, very politely, if everything was quite as it should be in the village.
‘I’m sorry to say that we’ve had a good deal of trouble lately,’ she answered. ‘The new parson has proved far from satisfactory, far. Very high church indeed. I should not be at all surprised to find that he is in the pay of Rome, his services are nothing but lace and smells and all that nonsense about changing clothes every now and then. In fact, I have been obliged to give up going to church here at all. It is monstrous that this living is not in our gift. Why should some Oxford college choose a parson for us? I have written to the dear bishop about it, but I fear that he is powerless to intervene.’
‘I say, that’s too bad,’ murmured Bobby, mentally resolving that he would go to church next Sunday.
‘Another thing,’ continued Lady Bobbin, ‘which is causing me great anxiety is this new law allowing people to marry their uncles. It is a perfect scandal, I consider. Three of our women have done it already. It is really most discouraging just when one was beginning to hope and think that morals were improving in the village at last.’
‘But if it’s allowed by law, surely it cannot be immoral?’ said Bobby, in just that reasonable tone of voice which he knew would annoy his mother most.
‘It is immoral – immoral and disgusting. That sort of thing can’t be made right just by passing a few laws, you know. Besides, the Church will never countenance it. The dear bishop came to lunch not long ago, and he was saying, and of course I entirely agreed with him, dear, good old man, that a measure of this kind
