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"I will not admit it, at any rate, Mr. Roby." "But I don't doubt Monogram is as careful as any one else to get the best cook he can, and takes a good deal of trouble about his wine too. Mongrober is very unfair about that champagne. It came out of Madame Cliquot's cellars before the war, and I gave Sprott and Burlinghammer 110s. for it." "Indeed!"
Leslie to the great commercial man, and with a brave smile asked Lopez to give his arm to the lady he loved. It is sometimes so hard to manage these "little things," said she to Lord Mongrober as she put her hand upon his arm.
Lord Mongrober stood also on the rug, dumb, with a look of intense impatience for his food, hardly ever condescending to answer the little attempts at conversation made by Mrs. Dick. Lady Eustace gushed into the room, kissing Mrs. Dick and afterwards kissing her great friend of the moment, Mrs. Leslie, who followed.
"What can one do, you know, when the House is sitting?" said the lady apologetically. "Of course you lords can get away, but then you have nothing to do." Lord Mongrober grunted, meaning to imply by his grunt that any one would be very much mistaken who supposed that he had any work to do because he was a peer of Parliament.
This was no less a man than Lord Mongrober, whose father had been a great judge in the early part of the century, and had been made a peer. The Mongrober estates were not supposed to be large, nor was the Mongrober influence at this time extensive. But this nobleman was seen about a good deal in society when the dinners given were supposed to be worth eating.
"The very same wine as we were drinking when your lordship last did me the honour of dining here," said Dick. Lord Mongrober raised his eyebrows, shook his head and put down the glass. "Shall we try another bottle?" asked Mrs. Dick with solicitude. "Oh, no; it'd be all the same, I know. I'll just take a little dry sherry if you have it." The man came with the decanter.
When a man pays 110s. a dozen for his champagne, and then gives it to guests like Lord Mongrober who are not even expected to return the favour, then that man ought to be allowed to talk about his wine without fear of rebuke. One doesn't have an agreement to that effect written down on parchment and sealed; but it is as well understood and ought to be as faithfully kept as any legal contract.
She then looked as though she meant to kiss Lord Mongrober, whom she playfully and almost familiarly addressed. But Lord Mongrober only grunted. Then came Sir Damask and Lady Monogram, and Dick at once began about his pigeons.
"No, dry sherry; dry sherry," said his lordship. The man was confounded, Mrs. Dick was at her wits' ends, and everything was in confusion. Lord Mongrober was not the man to be kept waiting by a government subordinate without exacting some penalty for such ill-treatment. "'Is lordship is a little out of sorts," whispered Dick to Lady Monogram. "Very much out of sorts, it seems."
Why on earth any one should want to know such a person as Lord Mongrober I can't understand. What does he bring into society?" "A title." "But what does that do of itself? He is an insolent, bloated brute." "Papa, you are using strong language to-night." "And that Lady Eustace! Heaven and earth! Am I to be told that that creature is a lady?"
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