To-day she was stirred by Tom Duncombe, not that she did not know him well enough, he being very much more in her set than were either his brother or sister. Henry had not liked Tom Duncombe from the first and to-day he positively loathed him. This was for a very simple human reason, namely, that he talked as though he, Henry, did not exist, looking over his head, and once, when Henry volunteered a comment on the weather, not answering him at all.
And then when the meal was nearly over Henry most unfortunately fell yet again into Lady Bell-Hall's bad graces.
"Servants," Lady Alicia was saying. "Servants. Been in a Registry Office all the morning. For father. He wants a footman and doesn't want to pay much for him; you know all about father, Tommy." (The Earl of Water-Somerset was notoriously mean). "Offering sixty--sixty for a footman. Did you hear anything like it? Couldn't hear of a soul. All too damned superior. Saw one or two--never saw such men. All covered with tattoo marks and war-ribbons--extraordinary times we live in. Extraordinary. Puffy Clerk told me yesterday--remarkable thing. Down at the Withers on Sunday. Sunday afternoon. Short of a fourth. Found the second footman played. Had him in. Perfect gentleman. Son of a butcher but had been a Colonel in the War. Broke off to fetch in the tea--then sat down again afterwards. Best of the joke won twenty quid off Addy Blake and next morning asked to have his wages raised. Said if he was going to be asked to play bridge with the family must have higher wages. And Addy gave them him."
"Dam funny. Dam funny," he said. Lady Bell-Hall shook her head. "A friend of mine, a Mr. Light-Johnson--I think you've met him here, Alicia--told me the other day he's got a man now who plays on the piano beautifully and reads Spanish. He says that we shall all be soon either killed in our beds or working for the Bolsheviks. What the servants are coming----"
As the old butler brought in the coffee at this moment she stopped and began hurriedly to talk about Conan Doyle's séances which seemed to her very peculiar--the pity of it was that we couldn't really tell if it had happened just as he said. "Of course he's been writing stories for years," she said. "He's the author of those detectives stories, Alicia--and writing stories for a long time must make one very regardless of the truth."