Ditto shifted from civilian garb and served dinner that evening. It became a meal that was more than a meal; it became a ceremonial. There was a formalism to it, there was pomp and circumstance. The passing of a dish was invested with a ritualistic essence. Under Ditto's ministrations so simple a dessert as cold rice pudding took on a new meaning. One wondered what Ditto could have done with a fancy ice. One felt that merely with a loaf of bread and a jug of wine and none of the other ingredients of Old Omar's recipe for a pleasant evening, he nevertheless could have fabricated the plausible illusion of a banquet of courses. Mrs. Gridley was thrilled to her marrows--possibly a trifle self-conscious but thrilled.
After dinner and a visit to the service wing, Mr. Braid sought out his sister on the veranda where she was doing what most of her sister-villagers of parched Ingleglade were doing at that same hour--wishing for rain.
"Well, Dumplings," he said, "you may continue to be your own serene self. In me behold a special plenipotentiary doing plenipotenching by the day, week, or job, satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded. I've just had a little heart-to-heart chat with Norah and there isn't a cloud in the sky as large as a man's hand."
"I wish there were--this terrible drought!" she said, her thoughts divided between the two concerns uppermost in her mind. "What did you say to her?"
"I approached the subject with my customary tact. With a significant glance toward the visiting nobleman I reminded Norah that blood was thicker than water, to which she piously responded by thanking God for three thousand miles of the water. Still, I think she's going to keep the peace. For the moment, she's impressed, or shall I say fascinated. Ditto is high-hatting her something scandalous, and she's taking it. For all our Norah's democratic principles she evidently carries in her blood the taint of a lurking admiration for those having an aristocratic bearing, and Ditto is satisfying the treasonable instinct which until now she has had no chance to gratify--at least, not while living with us. As for Delia, that shameless hussy is licking the spoon and begging for more. She's a traitor to United Ireland and the memory of Daniel O'Connell.