"Oh, I don't know," Monkley murmured. "It's more fun, that's all. But, look here, girl or boy, don't let me ever have any more heroics from you. D'ye hear? Or, by God! I'll--"
Sylvia felt that the only way of dealing with Monkley was to stand up to him from the first.
"Oh, shut up!" she broke in. "You can't frighten me. Next time, perhaps you'll tell me beforehand what you're going to do, and then I'll see if I'll let you do it."
He began to laugh. "You've got some pluck."
"I'm not Maudie, you see," Sylvia pointed out.
Presently a spasm of self-consciousness made her long to be once more in petticoats, and, grabbing wildly at her flying boyhood, she said how much she wanted to have adventures. Monkley promised she should have as many as she liked, and bade her farewell, saying that he was going to join her father in a saloon bar round the corner. Sylvia volunteered to accompany him, and after a momentary hesitation he agreed to take her. On the stairs they overtook the baron, very much dressed up, who, in answer to an inquiry from Monkley, informed them that he was going to lunch with the Emperor of Byzantium.
"Give my love to the Empress," Monkley laughed.
"It's-s nothing to laugh at," the baron said, severely. "He lives in West Kensington."
"Next door to the Pope, I suppose," Monkley went on.
"You never will be serious, but I'll take you there one afternoon, if you don't believe me."
The baron continued on his way down-stairs with a kind of mincing dignity, and Mrs. Meares came out of her bedroom.
"Isn't it nice for the dear baron?" she purred. "He's received some of his money from Berlin, and at last he can go and look up his old friends. He's lunching with the Emperor to-day."
"I hope he won't drop his crown in the soup," Monkley said.
"Ah, give over laughing, Mr. Monkley, for I like to think of the poor baron in the society to which he belongs. And he doesn't forget his old friends. But there, after all, why would he, for, though I'm living in Lillie Road, I've got the real spirit of the past in my blood, and the idea of meeting the Emperor doesn't elate me at all. It seems somehow as if I were used to meeting emperors."
On the way to the public house Monkley held forth to Sylvia on the prevalence of human folly, and vowed that he would hold the baron to his promise and visit the Emperor himself.