"We all do," said Dodo, "and we'll all do it again. I want everything at once, a cigarette and an ice and a gla.s.s of champagne and Berts. Esther, be angelic and fetch me Berts. Don't tell him only I want him, but fetch him. Oh, Jack, isn't it fun: yes, darling, we're going to begin the cotillion immediately, and I'm going to be ever so quiet. Edith, it was dear of you to offer to take my place, but I wouldn't give it up to Terpsich.o.r.e herself or even Salome. Jack dear, go and make every one go and sit down in two rows round the ball-room, and if anybody finds a rather large diamond about, it's probably mine, though I never wrote my name on it.... Wasn't it careless? It resembles the _Koh-i-noor_. Oh, Berts, there you are. Now don't lose your head, but give all the plainest women the most favors. Then the pretty ones will easily see the plan, and the plain ones won't. It's the greatest happiness for the plainest number."

Certainly it was the most successful cotillion. As Dodo had arranged, all the more unattractive people got selected first, and all the more attractive, as Dodo had foreseen, saw exactly what was happening. The style was distinctly anti-Leap-year and in the mirror-figure men, instead of women, rejected the faces in the gla.s.s, and Lord Ayr had nothing whatever to say to his wife, who was instantly accepted by Jack.

And at the end, the band preceding, they danced through the entire house, from cellar to garret. They waltzed through drawing-rooms and dining-room, and up the stairs, and through Dodo's bedroom, and through Jack's dressing-room, where his pajamas were lying on his bed (Berts put them on _en pa.s.sant_), and into _cul-de-sacs_, and impenetrable servants' rooms. And somehow it was Dodo all the time who inspired these childish orgies: those near her saw her, those behind danced wildly after her. There was no accounting for it, except in the fact that while she was enjoying herself so enormously, it was impossible not to enjoy too. Sometimes it was she shrieking, "Yes, straight on," sometimes it was her laugh-choked voice, saying "No, don't go in there," but the fact that she was leading them, with her nursery fender, and her vitality, and her ropes of pearls, and her complete _abandon_ to the spirit of dancing, with Berts for partner in Jack's pajamas, made a magnet that it was impossible not to follow. They pa.s.sed through bedroom and attic, they went twice round the huge kitchen, where the _chef_, at Dodo's imperious command, laid down his culinary implements (which at the moment meant an ice-pail) and joined the dance with the first kitchen-maid. Then Dodo saw a footman standing idle, and called to him, "Take my maid, William," and William with a broad grin embraced a perfectly willing Frenchwoman of great attractions, and joined in the dance. Like the fairies in a Midsummer-night's Dream, they danced the whole hour through, Dodo with Berts, the chef with the kitchen-maid, William with Dodo's maid, Lord Ayr with Nadine, Lady Ayr with somebody whom n.o.body knew by sight, who had probably come there by mistake, and the first twenty couples or so finished up in the cellar. This, though it seemed improvised, had been provided for, and there were cane-chairs to rest in, and bottles instantly opened. The rest, following the band, danced their way back to the supper-room, where they were almost immediately joined by the cellar party, who were hungry as well as thirsty, and had nothing to eat down below.

It was between three and four o'clock that the last guests took their ways. As the dance had been announced to take place from ten till two, the cordial spirit of the invitation had been made good. And at length Dodo found herself alone with Jack.

"Lovely, just lovely," she said, as he unclasped her diamond collar.

"Oh, Jack, what a darling world it is!"

"Not tired?"

Dodo faced round, and her brilliance and freshness was a thing to marvel at

"Look at me!" she said. "Tell me if I look tired!"

He laid the collar down on her table: her neck seemed to him so infinitely more beautiful than the gorgeous bauble with which it had been covered, a Beauty released from beauteous bonds.

"Not very. Ah, Dodo, and this is the best of all, when they have all gone, and you are left."

She put her face up to his.

"Why, of course," she said. "Do you suppose I wasn't looking forward to this one minute alone with you all the evening? I was, my dear, though if I said I thought of it all the time, I should be telling a silly lie.

But it was anch.o.r.ed firmly in my mind all the time. Oh, what pretty speeches for a middle-aged old couple to make to each other! But the fact is that we get on very nicely together. Good-night, old boy. It's all too lovely. Oh, Daddy! Fancy becoming Daddy! Oh, by the way, did Hugh come? I didn't see him."

"Yes, he sat out a couple of dances with Nadine, and then went away."

"Poor old chap!" said Dodo.

As has been mentioned, Dodo proposed to take her family and a great many other people as well to spend Christmas down at Meering, which at this inclement time of the year often had spells of warm and genial weather.

Scattered through the same weeks there were to be several shooting-parties at Winston, but motor-cars, driven at a sufficiently high speed, made light of the difficulty of being in two places at the same time, and on the day after the dance she talked these arrangements over with Nadine.

"In any case," she said, "you can be hostess in one house and I, in the other, so that we can be in two places at once quite easily, so Jack is wrong as usual. Jack dear, I said 'as usual.'"

Jack got up: it was he who had made the ill-considered remark that you can't be in two places at once.

"I heard," he said, "and you may hear, too, that I will not have you going up to North Wales every other day, and flying down again the next.

Otherwise you may settle what you like. Personally, I shall be at Winston almost all the time, as there's a heap of business to be done, and as Nadine hates shooting-parties--"

"Oh, a story!" said Nadine.

"Well, my dear, you always do your best to spoil them by making a large quant.i.ty of young gentlemen, who have been asked to shoot, sit round you and talk to you instead."

"Papa Jack, if you want to call me a flirt, pray do so. I will forgive you instantly. And to save you trouble, I will tell you what you are driving to--"

"At," said Jack.

"Driving to," repeated Nadine with considerable asperity, for she was aware she was wrong. "You want me to be at Meering, and Mama to be at Winston. So why not say so without calling me a flirt?"

"This daughter of Eve--" began Jack.

"My name is Dorothea," interrupted Dodo, "but they call me Dodo for short. I was never called Eve either before, during, or after baptism."

"All I mean," said Jack, "is that Dorothea is not going to divide the week into week-ends, and be twenty-four hours at Meering and then twenty-four at Winston. The master of the house has spoken."

"What a bully!" said Nadine.

"Then I shan't give you a wedding-present," said Jack.

"Darling Papa Jack, you are not a bully. Let's all go down to Meering in a few days, and stop there over Christmas. Then you and Dorothea shall go to Winston, and I shall be left all alone at Meering, and you shall have your horrid shooting-parties and she shall do the flirting instead of me."

"Strictly speaking, will you be all alone at Meering?"

"Not absolutely. I have asked a few friends."

"Who is going to chaperone you all, darling?" said Dodo.

"We shall chaperone each other, as usual."

"That you and Dodo can settle," said Jack. "Good-by: don't quarrel."

"Indeed, that will be all right, Mama," said Nadine, "or I daresay Edith would come. Anyhow, we were often all together before like that in the summer."

"Yes, my dear, but it's a little different now," said Dodo. "You are engaged to Seymour, and Hugh is going to be there, too."

"Yes, but that makes it all the simpler."

Dodo got up.

"I wonder if you realize that Seymour is in love with you," she said.

"In love with you like Hugh is, I mean."

"Perfectly, and he is charming about it," said Nadine. "And I practise every morning being in love with him like that. I think I am getting on very well. I dreamed about him last night. I thought he gave me a great box of jade and when I opened it, there was a rabbit inside--"

"That shows great progress," said Dodo.

"Mama, I think you are laughing at me. But what would you have? I am very fond of him, he is handsome and clever and charming. I expected to find it tiresome when he told me he was in love like that, but it is not the least so."

Memories of the man she had married when she was even younger than Nadine, came unbidden into Dodo's mind: she remembered her first husband's blind, dog-like devotion and her own _ennui_ when he strove to express it, to communicate it to her.

"Nadine," she said, "treat it reverently, my dear. There is nothing in the world that a man can give a woman that is to be compared to that. It is better than a rabbit in a jade-box. When I was even younger than you, Papa Jack's cousin gave it me, and--and I didn't reverence it.

Don't repeat my irreparable error."

"Weren't you nice to him?" asked Nadine.

"I was a brute beast to him, my darling."