ONE:So you are back too, Thomas, she said, and what a pity you did not get back sooner. Lord Inverbroom has just called, and left a note for you. I wonder you did not see him in the Cathedral, for he went to service there. I said you always took a walk on Sunday morning after service, so sooner than wait, he wrote a note for you. Oh, you have it in your hand. What a curious handwriting his is: I should have thought a spider from the ink-pot could have done better than that, but no doubt you will be able to make it out. Of course I asked him to stop to lunch, for whether we are alone or expect company, Im sure my table is good enough for anybody. Alice will not be here: she has gone to lunch with Mr Silverdale.{241}But what surprised her even more than her hostesss politeness to a footman, or the handing of a cigarette to herself, was her husbands obvious unconcern with the magnificence of his surroundings. He seemed perfectly at his ease, and though there was nothing in his manner which suggested a sort of haughty polish which she felt was suitable in these exalted places, he behaved as simply as if he was at home. In fact his simplicity almost made his wife blush once, when, on the occasion of a large puff of smoke coming down the chimney he said to Lord Inverbroom, I can show you a new cowl which will quite stop that. But Lord Inverbroom did not seem the least uncomfortable at this sudden peeping out of the mercantile cloven hoof, and merely replied that a cowl that would prevent that chimney from smoking would be worth its weight in gold. That was very tactful, and Mrs Keeling was vexed that her husband would not leave the subject: instead he laughed and said that the cowl in question did not cost much more than its weight in iron. Then luckily the talk drifted away on to books, and though Mrs Keeling knew that by all the rules of polite behaviour her husband should have been engaging his hostess in light conversation while she talked{167} to her host, Keeling and Lord Inverbroom quite lost themselves in discussing some Italian book with pictures that had lately appeared. Lord Inverbroom said he could not afford it, which must be a joke....
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