This aspect of the situation struck Ermyntrude most forcibly. "I hadn't thought of that," she admitted. "I must say, it does make things a bit awkward. I mean, you know what Prince is! It would be awful if I went and said, "Get off that chair, Prince," as I don't doubt I will do, thanks to the way you spoil that dog, Wally, and Alexis thought I was speaking to him. Oh well, Prince will have to be tied up, that's all."
"Now, that's one thing I won't put up with," said Wally. "It's little enough I ever ask, but have my poor old dog tied up for the sake of a Russian prince I don't know and don't want to know, I won't. If you'd asked me before inviting the fellow, I should have said don't, because I don't like foreigners; but, as usual, no one consulted me."
Ermyntrude looked concerned. "Well, I'm sorry you're so set against Alexis, Wally, but honestly he doesn't speak foreign."
Wally paid not the slightest heed to this, but said: "A set of wasters, that's what those White Russians are. I'm not surprised they had a revolution. Serves them right! What was this chap of yours doing at Antibes? You needn't tell me! Living on some rich woman, that's what he was doing!" He found that his ward had raised her eyes quickly to his face, and was flushing rather uncomfortably, and added: "Yes, I know what you're thinking, but I shall be a wealthy man one of these days, so the cases aren't the same. When my Aunt Clara dies, I shall pay Ermyntrude back every penny."
Mary made no remark. Wally's Aunt Clara, who had been an inmate for the past ten years of a Home for Mentally Deficients, was well known to her by repute, having served Wally as an excuse for his various extravagances ever since she could remember.
Ermyntrude gave a chuckle. "Yes, we all know about this precious Aunt Clara of yours, dearie. All I can say is, I hope you may get her money, not that there's any question of paying back between us, because there isn't; and if you're trying to cast it up at me that I grudge you anything, you know I don't grudge a penny, except for what you squander on things which we won't mention."
This sinister reference, accompanied as it was by a rising note in his wife's voice, quelled Wally. He hastily passed his cup to her for more coffee, and greeted, with frank relief, the sudden and tempestuous entrance of his stepdaughter.
This damsel came into the room on a wave of dogs. Two cocker spaniels, Ermyntrude's Pekinese, and an overgrown Borzoi cavorted about her, and since one of the cockers had apparently been in the river, a strong aroma of dog at once pervaded the room.
"The Sports Girl!" remarked Mary, casting an experienced eye over Vicky's costume.
This consisted of a pair of slacks, an Aertex shirt, and sandals which displayed two rows of reddened toe-nails.
"Oh, darling, not the spaniels! Oh, if Prince hasn't been in the water again!" exclaimed Ermyntrude distressfully.
"Poor sweets!" Vicky crooned, ejecting them from the room. "Lovely, lovely pets, not now! Lie down, Roy! Good Roy, lie down!"
"What's this idea of bringing a pack of dogs in to breakfast?" demanded Wally, repulsing the advances of the Borzoi. "Lie down, will you? You might as well try to eat in a damned menagerie!" He added, after a glance at Vicky's costume: "What's more, it puts me off my food to see you in that get-up. I don't know why your mother allows it."
"Oh, let her alone, Wally!" said Ermyntrude. "I'm sure she looks as pretty as paint, whatever she wears. Not but what I don't care for trousers myself. Time and again when I've seen some fat creature waddling about in them, I've thought to myself, well, my girl, if you could see your own bottom you'd soon change into a skirt."
"Darling! I practically haven't got a bottom!" protested Vicky, sliding into her place opposite to Mary.
"Nor you have, ducky. That's one way you don't take after me!"
Vicky smiled abstractedly, and began to read her letters, while her mother sat surveying her with fond admiration.
She was indeed a very pretty girl, with pale corncoloured hair, which she wore rather long, and curled into a thick bush of ringlets at the base of her neck; and large blue eyes that gazed innocently forth from between darkened lashes. Even the ruthless plucking of' her eyebrows, and the pencilling of improbable arches perceptibly higher than the shadows of the original brows, failed to ruin her beauty. Her complexion varied in accordance with her mood, or her costume, but she had no need of powder to whiten a naturally fair skin.
"I suppose you know about this prince coming to stay?" said Wally, in a grumbling tone. "What your mother wants with him I don't know, though I dare say you're as bad as she is, and think there's something fine about having a prince in the house."
"Oh, I think it's lovely!" Vicky said.
This artless response disgusted Wally so much that he relapsed into silence.
Ermyntrude had slit open another letter, and suddenly exclaimed "Ah!" in an exultant tone. A triumphant smile curled her lips. "There's nothing like a prince!" she said simply. "The Derings have accepted!"
Even Wally seemed pleased by this announcement, but he said, with a glance in Mary's direction, that he didn't think the Prince had anything to do with it. "I wouldn't mind betting young Bering's home," he said.
Mary coloured, but replied calmly: "I told you he was, yesterday."
Vicky emerged from the clouds of some apparently beatific dream to inquire: "Who is he?"
"He's an old friend of Mary's," said Wally.
"The boy-friend?" asked Vicky, interested.
"No, not the boy-friend," said Mary. "His people live at the Manor, and I've known him ever since we came to live here. He's a Chancery barrister. You must remember him, surely!"
"No, but he sounds frightfully dull," said Vicky.
"Well, he's a very nice young fellow," said Wally. "And if he wants to marry Mary I shall make no objection. No objection at all .What's more, I shall leave her all my money."
"When you get it," said Ermyntrude, with a chuckle. "I'm sure I hope he will ask Mary to marry him, because it would be what I call a good match, and what's more, the man that gets you, my dear, will be very lucky, whatever his people may say."
"Thank you!" said Mary. "But as he hasn't asked me to marry him, I don't think we need worry about what his people would say, Aunt Ermy." Conscious of her heightened colour, she made haste to change the subject, looking across the table at Vicky, and saying: "By the way, what got you out of bed so bright and early this morning? I heard you carolling in the bath at an ungodly hour."
"Oh, I went out to see if I could get a rabbit!"
Mary's lips twitched. "I thought this was a Sports-Girl Day! Don't tell me you weren't wearing sandals and painted toe-nails, because it would spoil the whole picture for me!"
"But I was!" said Vicky, opening her eyes very wide.
"You must have looked a treat!"
"Yes, I do think I looked rather nice," Vicky agreed wholeheartedly.
"Did you shoot anything?"
"Oh yes, very nearly!"
"That's where you take after your father, ducky," said Ermyntrude. "I never knew such a man for sport! Three times he went to Africa, big-game shooting. That was before he met me, of course."
"Well, if you call missing rabbits taking after her father, I don't," remarked Wally. "As far as I can make out, her father never missed anything. It's a great pity he didn't, if you ask me, for if he had perhaps I shouldn't have had to live in a house full of bits of wild animals. I dare say there are people who like keeping their umbrellas in elephants' legs, and having gongs framed in hippo tusks, and tables made out of rhinoceros hides, and leopard skins chucked over their sofas, and heads stuck up all round the walls, but I'm not one of them, and I've never pretended that I was. You might as well live in the Natural History Museum, and be done with it."
"And the Bawtrys are coming too!" said Ermyntrude, who had paid not the least attention to this speech. "That'll make us ten, all told."