"You're my idea of an English duke."
"My dear Lola," I replied, "you're quite wrong. The ordinary English
duke is a stout, middle-aged gentleman with a beard, and he generally
wears thick knickerbockers and shocking bad hats."
"Do you know any?"
"Two or three," I admitted.
"And duchesses, too?"
I again pleaded guilty. In these democratic days, if one is engaged in
public and social affairs one can't help running up against them. It is
their fault, not mine.
"Do tell me about them," said Lola, with her elbows on the table.
I told her.
"And are earls and countesses just the same?" she asked with a
disappointed air.
"Just the same, only worse. They're so ordinary you can't pick them out
from common misters and missuses."
Saying this I rose, for we had finished our dessert, and proposed coffee
in the lounge. There we found Colonel Bunnion at so wilful a loose end
that I could not find it in my heart to refuse him an introduction
to Lola. He manifested his delight by lifting the skirt of his
dinner-jacket with his hands and rising on his spurs like a bantam cock.
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