"Aha, Bonker, so you haf returned!" he cried. "In ze meanvile I haf had vun great good fortune. Let me present my friend Mr Bonker, ze Lady Grillyer."
The Countess bowed most graciously, and raising a pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed eye-glasses mounted on a stem of the same material, looked at Mr Bunker through these with a by no means disapproving glance.
At first sight it was evident that Lady Alicia must "take after" her noble father. The Countess was aquiline of nose, large of person, and emphatic in her voice and manner.
"You are the 'showman,' Mr Bunker, are you not?" she said, with a smile for which many of her acquaintances would have given a tolerable percentage of their incomes.
"It seems," replied Mr Bunker, smiling back agreeably, "that the Baron is now the showman, and I must congratulate him on his first venture."
For an instant the Countess seemed a trifle taken aback. It was a considerable number of years since she had been addressed in precisely this strain, and in fact at no time had her admirers ventured quite so dashingly to the attack. But there was something entirely irresistible in Mr Bunker's manner, partly perhaps because he never made the mistake of heeding a first rebuff. The Countess coughed, then smiled a little again, and said to the Baron, "You didn't tell me that your showman supplied the little speeches as well."
"I could not know it; zere has not before been ze reason for a pretty speech," responded the Baron, gallantly.
If Lady Grillyer had been anybody else, one would have said that she actually giggled. Certainly a little wave of scandalised satisfaction rippled all over her.
"Oh, really!" she cried, "I don't know which of you is the worst offender."
All this time, as may be imagined, Mr Bunker had been in a state of high mystification at his friend's unusual adroitness.
"How the deuce did he get hold of her?" he said to himself.
In the next pause the Baron solved the riddle.
"You vil vunder, Bonker," he said, "how I did gom to know ze Lady Grillyer."
"I envied, certainly," replied his friend, with a side glance at the now purring Countess.
"She vas of my introdogtions, bot till after you vent out zis morning I did not lairn her name. Zen I said to myself, 'Ze sun shines, Himmel is kind! Here now is ze fair Lady Grillyer--my introdogtion!' and zo zat is how, you see."