"Did you hear, Mr. Grant?" Madge called out. "Miss von Schwarzenberg says now she wants to learn our foolish national game."
"Never!" Julian turned back to the tea-table. His tone was faintly ironic--as though the sensation created by this lady's conversion to golf seemed disproportionate to its importance.
Lady McIntyre lifted her appealing eyes. "I wonder if you'd be very kind, Mr. Grant, and help the children to teach Miss von Schwarzenberg?"
The almost infinitesimal pause was cancelled, obliterated, by Miss von Schwarzenberg's promptitude. "Oh, I couldn't think of being such a trouble." She had risen. "Sit here, Mr. Grant," she said. "Yes, _please_. I've finished." In spite of his protest, she retired to a chair on the far side of the fireplace--Napier's side--and picked up her knitting.
Madge followed, dog-like, and so did the Aberdeen.
"It _is_ a comfort," Lady McIntyre went on, "to find such a terribly clever person"--she nodded significantly in the direction of Miss von Schwarzenberg--"taking an interest in the things ordinary mortals care about. It's been the one fault I've had to find with Greta. She doesn't play games. They don't, you know. But the Germans are a wonderful people! Take this young girl"--she lowered her voice. But, however, little of the conversation was lost on Miss von Schwarzenberg. She knitted steadily. Madge played with the dog.
"Greta's only twenty-five or six," Lady McIntyre went on. "Her father was an officer of Uhlans. An invalid now. And somehow they lost their money. An uncle in America is tremendously rich, and he's had Greta at one of the great women's colleges over there. She insisted on going home every summer ... _so_ domestic, the Germans! I always think it's extremely nice of them to feel affectionate toward such a horrid country as Germany--don't you, Mr. Grant? And such a language to wrestle with, poor things! Do you know, they call a thimble a finger hat? Yes, and a pin a stick needle!"
"Well, well!"--Sir William broke off in the middle of the golf discussion, and rattled his seals with great vigor, as though they were a summons to industry--a simulacrum of factory bell or works whistle. "I must write one more letter. No, I don't need you, Gavan."