Part 2 (1/2)

Dodo got up.

”So we've got to wait for a shock,” she said. ”Is that all you can suggest? Anyhow, I shall hold your hand if a shock comes. What sort of a shock would be good for me, do you think? I know what would be good for Edith, and that would be that she suddenly found that she couldn't help writing music that was practically indistinguishable from the _Messiah_.”

”And that,” said Edith, ”is blasphemy.”

Jack caught on.

”Hush, Dodo,” he said, ”an inspired, a sacred work to all true musicians.”

Edith glanced wildly round.

”I shall go mad,” she said, ”if there is any more of this delicious English humour. Handel! Me and Handel! How dare you? Brutes!”

CHAPTER II

HIGHNESS

Unlike most women Dodo much preferred to breakfast downstairs in a large dining-room, facing the window, rather than mumble a private tray in bed. Jack, in consequence, was allowed to be as grumpy as he pleased at this meal, for Dodo's sense of fairness told her that if she was so unfeminine as to feel cheerful and sociable at half-past nine in the morning, she must not expect her husband to be so unmasculine as to resemble her.

”Crumbs get into my bed,” she had said to Edith the evening before, when, the morning venue was debated, ”and my egg tastes of blankets. And I hate bed when I wake: I feel bright and brisk and fresh, which is very trying for other people. Jack breakfasts downstairs, too, though if you asked him to breakfast in your bedroom, I daresay he would come.”

”I hate seeing anybody till eleven,” said Edith, ”and many people then.”

”Very well, Jack, as usual, will be cross to me, which is an excellent plan, because I don't mind, and he works off his morning temper. Don't come down to protect me: it's quite unnecessary.”

This was really equivalent to an invitation to be absent, and as it coincided with Edith's inclination, the hour of half-past nine found Dodo reading her letters, and Jack, fortified against intrusive sociability by a copy of the _Times_ propped against the tea-kettle.

The room faced south, and the sun from the window struck sideways across Dodo's face, as she exhibited a pleasant appet.i.te for correspondence and solid food, while Jack sat morose in the shadow of the _Times_. This oblique light made the black ink in which Dodo's correspondents had written to her appear to be a rich crimson. She had already remarked on this interesting fact, with an allusion to the spectacles which had been finally lost three years ago, and as a test question to see how Jack was feeling, she asked him if he had seen them. As he made no answer whatever, she concluded that he was still feeling half-past ninish.

Then she got really interested in a letter from Miss Grantham, an old friend who had somehow slipped out of her orbit. Miss Grantham was expected here this afternoon, but apparently had time to write a long letter, though she could have said it all a few hours later.

”Grantie is getting poorer and poorer,” she said. ”A third aunt has died lately, and so Grantie had to pay three thousand pounds. I had no idea funerals were so expensive. Isn't it miserable for her?”

She turned over the page.

”Oh! There are compensations,” she said, ”for the third aunt left her twenty-five thousand pounds, so she's up on balance. Three from twenty-five.... Not funerals: duties. But she sold a picture by Franz Hals to make sure. How like Grantie: she would run no risks! She never did; she always remained single and lived in the country away from influenza and baccarat. Oh, Jack, the Franz Hals fetched eight thousand pounds, so her poverty is bearable. Wasn't that lovely?”

”Lovely!” said Jack.

Dodo looked up from Grantie's letter, and ran her eyes round the walls.

”But those two pictures there are by Franz Hals,” she said. ”Do let us sell one, and then we shall have eight thousand pounds. You shall have the eight, darling, because the picture is yours, and I shall have the thousands because I thought of it.”

Jack gave a short grunt as he turned over his paper. He had not quite got over the attack of the morning microbe, to which males are chiefly subject.

”All right,” he said. ”And what shall we buy with the eight thousand pounds? Some more boots or bacon?”

Dodo considered this oracular utterance.