"My Goodness!" she said.
"Isn't it right?" I asked, getting hold of it, but when I had looked at
it I was no wiser, for I couldn't see what was wrong. There it was,
written out very nicely, "_Mr. Vero-Taylor At Home. Wednesday the
twenty-first_," and the address in the corner, and all those rules about
the dominos, and that was all.
"Oh, dear darling Christina," I begged, deadly curious, "do tell me what
is wrong with that? I cannot guess."
"It's just as well, perhaps," she said. "Preserve your sublime
ignorance, my dear child, as long as you can."
And not another word could I get out of her! I suppose she calls that
being loyal to her employer.
I told Ben, and he said he knew, and what was more, he would go one
better. He got hold of one of the cards, and altered it. And then it was
_Mr. Vero-Taylor and Lady Scilly At Home_! I think that was absurd, for
though Lady Scilly meddles in all our affairs, she doesn't quite live
here yet! and Mother does, and what's more, Mother never goes out at all
except to take a servant's character, or scold the butcher, or something
of the sort, so she is really the one at home! Christina took it from
him, and looked at it, and I'll swear I saw her smile before she tore it
up. So Ben had me there, for he still wouldn't tell me what was wrong
with the first card.
We began to write in the names of the people. It took us a whole
morning, Ben, Ariadne, Miss Mander and I. I offered to help, and really,
though I write rather badly, I can spell better than any of them, but I
don't believe they valued my help very much, and only gave me a card now
and then to keep me quiet. There were six young men that Ariadne wanted
asked--six, no less, if you please--and she's only been out six months!
And she kept trying to force them on George, same as you do cards in a
card trick! But he didn't take any notice, and kept walking up and down
the room mentioning the names of all sorts of absurd people that nobody
wanted, except himself. It was really going to be a very smart party;
there were to be detectives and reporters, and what more can you have
than that? All the countesses and dukes and so on were to come, of
course, but I must say I had thought that George knew a great many more
of them; he managed to scratch up so few, considering all the talk there
had been about it. I kept saying, "Oh, do give me a Countess to ask. You
give me all the plain people to do."
Somehow or other, George did not seem to be pleased, and he sent us all
away after fifty had been written.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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