"I was but
saying to Mr Cotterill over breakfast--I said to him----"
"I shall ask Councillor Rhys-Jones to meet you," said Denry. "He's one
of the principal members of the Town Council here; Local Secretary of
the Lifeboat Institution. Great friend of mine."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs Cotterill, "it'll be quite an affair."
It was.
Denry found to his relief that the only difficult part of arranging a
dinner at the Majestic was the steeling of yourself to enter the
gorgeous portals of the hotel. After that, and after murmuring that you
wished to fix up a little snack, you had nothing to do but listen to
suggestions, each surpassing the rest in splendour, and say "Yes."
Similarly with the greeting of a young woman who was once to you the
jewel of the world. You simply said, "Good-afternoon, how are you?" And
she said the same. And you shook hands. And there you were, still alive!
The one defect of the dinner was that the men were not in evening dress.
(Denry registered a new rule of life: Never travel without your evening
dress, because you never know what may turn up.) The girls were
radiantly white. And after all there is nothing like white.
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