A dozen guests or so came down next afternoon to spend a week, and before that week was over their numbers were redoubled; they settled on Stanier like a flock of gay and chattering birds. They were at liberty all day to amuse themselves as they liked, tennis and fishing and golf were diversions enough for them all: Violet, admirable hostess as she was, saw that they were occupied, and devoted herself to the dowagery element among them, which liked motoring to points of interest or going to see friends in country-houses in the neighbourhood. There was breakfast and lunch at elastic hours and no full or formal assembly met until dinner-time. Then there was the immemorial ritual of the house reassembling itself: old Lady Yardley in alabaster silence and immobility was the first to arrive in the long gallery, and the guests collected, and when all were there the major-domo opened the door into Colin’s room, and he joined them. Just that one old-fashioned pompous moment was preserved: it was the Stanier use, like grace before meat. As he entered everyone stood up: it was only Colin of course, who next moment would be chattering like the rest of them or shouting with laughter, but just then he was Lord Yardley.
But most of the day, Colin would have had Dennis with him, and often the boy dressed early and spent this last half-hour before dinner with his father. Very likely the two would be playing some game together when the summons of the opening door came, but on the moment Colin would jump up, leaving whatever fascinating pursuit was in progress, and become somebody quite different.
“Now, behave yourself, Dennis, just for a minute,” he would say.... “We’ll go back to our game afterwards, if we can. My move....” That was part of Dennis’s education; just for that minute it was a solemn business to be Lord Yardley, the master of this magnificent inheritance, with its regal splendours. There was no other house in England like it, nor had there been for three centuries past, and it was his father’s now, and would one day be his, and plenteousness would be in its palaces so long as he into whose hands it was given remembered to whom he owed it, and rendered affiance and allegiance.