CHAPTER ELEVEN


Dinner that night was a very grand affair. Fledge inspired awe by his
majestic mien--Fledge liked duchesses--and Burton and William, the
recently promoted, with their heads striped with grease and powder,
looked to the enraptured eyes of the female servants their very best.

There were crimson roses in beautiful silver vases on the table, and in
the centre stood a particularly hideous but very valuable silver
ship--"given," as Tommy once gravely explained to a guest, "by somebody
or other--a king, or an admiral, I think--to one of my ancestors, in the
seventeenth century, who did something or other rather well."

Lady Kingsmead, under the Duchess' influence, was suffering from one of
her attacks of thinking Tommy "quaint," so, by the old lady's
suggestion, the boy was allowed to sit at the foot of his own table,
pretending, as he had told his sister he should find it necessary to do,
to be as young as his mother's guests.

The Duchess, greatly diverted by his demeanour, and reinforced on her
other side by an amusing, sad dog of thirty, who wrote wicked novels,
thoroughly enjoyed her dinner. There are so many reasons for enjoying
one's dinner; some people do because they like to meet their
fellow-creatures; some because they like being seen at certain houses;
some because they have beauty to display or stories to tell; and some
because they enjoy eating and drinking simply as eating and drinking.
The Duchess, in that she enjoyed dining for all the reasons above cited,