Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/230

 coffee—afford a wonderful opportunity for making a little return to people whom one truly honestly doesn’t want to have dining; I’m sure you understand! There is nothing wrong with them or I would not invite them to have the honour of meeting the princess; but, as Will would say, they just don’t pull their weight in the boat. . . I recognized one or two. . . and then, really, I did not know what to make of it. After anything I may have said to the princess about the unpleasantly go-as-you-please, enjoy-yourself-and-don’t-ask-questions character of modern London, you may be sure that I had not encouraged anybody to collect the first half-dozen waifs and strays from the street and bring them in. Every one had been told that the princess would be there, so that they might equip themselves accordingly; yet, when I looked round the room, I did not know a tenth of the people! It was like a bad dream! You know my drawing-room in Mount Street: windows on the south side, and between them a sofa on which I was sitting with the princess; to the left, at the far end, the piano; to the right, the door. At one moment—a perfect picture! Dear old Lord Fenchurch with his St. George, Brackenbury with the Bath, my boy with his war medals—almost every one with a little