'True enough,' muttered Shred, who almost always trod heavily on the tail of his friend's remarks. 'True enough.'
'Bellgrove,' said Perch-Prism, 'wake your ideas up, old friend, and lead the way in. I see that every light is blazing in the homestead of the Prunes. Lord, what a lot we are!' he moved his small pig-like eyes across the faces of his colleagues - 'what a hideous lot we are - but there it is - there it is.'
'You're not much of a silk-purse yourself,' said a voice.
'In we go, la! In we go!' cried Cutflower. 'Terribly gay now! 'Terribly gay'! We must 'all' be terribly gay!'
Perch-Prism slid up under Bellgrove's shoulder. 'My old friend,' he said. 'You haven't forgotten what I said about Irma, have you? It may be difficult for you. I have even more recent information. She's dead nuts on you, old man. Dead nuts. Watch your steps, chief. Watch 'em carefully.'
'I - will- watch - my - steps, Perch-Prism, have no fear,' said Bellgrove with a leer that his colleagues could in no way interpret.
Spiregrain, Throd and Splint stood hand in hand. Their spiritual master was dead. They were enormously glad of it. They winked at each other and dug one another in the ribs and then joined hands again in the darkness.
A mass movement towards the gate of the Prunesquallors began. Within this gate there was nothing that could be called a front garden, merely an area of dark red gravel which had been raked by the gardener. The parallel lines formed by his rake were quite visible in the moonlight. He might have saved himself the trouble for within a few moments the neat striated effect was a thing of the past. Not a square red inch escaped the shuffling and stamping of the Professors' feet. Hundreds of footprints of all shapes and sizes, crossing and recrossing, toes and heels superimposed with such freaks of placing that it seemed as though among the professors there were some who boasted feet as long as an arm, and others who must have found it difficult to balance upon shoes that a monkey might have found too tight.
After the bottleneck of the garden gate had been negotiated and the wine-red horde, with Bellgrove at its van, like an oriflamme, were before the front door, the headmaster turned with his hand hovering at the height of the bell pull, and raising his lion-like head, was about to remind his staff that as the guests of Irma Prunesquallor he hoped to find in their deportment and general behaviour that sense of decorum which he had so far had no reason to suppose they possessed or could even simulate, when a butler, dressed up like a Christmas cracker, flung the front door open with a flourish which was obviously the result of many years' experience. The speed of the door as it swung on its hinges was extraordinary, but what was just as dramatic was the silence - a silence so complete that Bellgrove, with his head turned towards his staff and his hand still groping in the air for the bell-pull, could not grasp the reason for the peculiar behaviour of his colleagues. When a man is about to make a speech, however modest, he is glad to have the attention of his audience. To see on every face that stared in his direction an expression of intense interest, but an interest that obviously had nothing to do with him, was more than disturbing. What had happened to them? Why were all those eyes so out of focus - or if they were 'in' focus why, should they skim his own as though there were something absorbing about the woodwork of the high green door behind him? And why was Throd standing on tiptoe in order to look 'through' him?
Bellgrove was about to turn - not because he thought there could be anything to see but because he was experiencing that sensation that causes men to turn their heads on deserted roads in order to make sure they are alone. But before he could turn of his own free will he received two sharp yet deferential knuckle-taps on his left shoulder-blade - and leaping about as though at the touch of a ghost he found himself face to face with the tall Christmas-cracker of a butler.
'You will pardon me, sir, for making free with my knuckle, I am sure, sir,' said the glittering figure in the hall. 'But you are impatiently awaited, sir, and no wonder if I may say so,'
'If you 'insist',' said Bellgrove. 'So be it.'
His remark meant nothing at all but it was the only thing he could think of to say.
'And now, sir,' continued the butler, lifting his voice into a higher register which gave quite a new expression to his face - 'if you will be so gracious as to follow me, I will lead the way to madam.'
He moved to one side and cried out into the darkness.
'Forward, gentlemen! if you please,' and turning smartly on his heel he began to lead Bellgrove through the hall and down a number of short passageways until a wider space, at the foot of a flight of stairs, brought him and his followers to a halt.
'I have no doubt, sir,' the butler said, inclining himself reverentially as he spoke - and to Bellgrove's way of thinking the man was speaking overmuch 'I have no doubt, sir, that you are familiar with the customary procedure.'
'Of course, my man. Of course,' said Bellgrove. 'What is it?'
'O sir!' said the butler. 'You are very humorous,' and he began to titter - an unpleasant sound to come from the top of a cracker.
'There are many 'procedures', my man. Which one were you referring to?'
'To the one, sir, that pertains to the order in which the guests are announced - by name, of course, as they file through the doorway of the salon. It is all very cut and dried, sir.'
'What 'is' the order, my dear fellow, if it is not the order of seniority?'
'And so it is, sir, in all respects, save that it is customary for the headmaster, which would be you, sir, to bring up the rear.'
'The rear?'
'Quite so sir. As a kind of shepherd, I suppose sir, driving his flock before him, as it were.'
There was a short silence during which Bellgrove began to realize that to be the last to present himself to his hostess, he would be the first to hold any kind of conversation with her.
'Very well,' he said. 'The tradition must, of course, remain inviolate.
Ridiculous as it seems in the face of it, I shall, as you put it, bring up the rear. Meanwhile, it is getting late. There is no time to sort out the staff into age-groups, and so on. None of them are chickens. Come along now, gentlemen, come along; and if you will be so kind as to stop combing your hair before the door is
