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He
moved softly about the room, gathering up and removing the crumpled
hulls of yesterday; that done he reappeared at the bedside with a
cup of admirable tea and one thin slice of bread-and-butter,
reported on the day's weather, stood deferential for instructions.
"You will be going out for lunch, sir. Very good, sir. White slips
of course, sir. You will go down into the country in the afternoon?
Will that be the serge suit, sir, or the brown?"
These matters settled, the new aristocrat could yawn and stretch
like any aristocrat under the old dispensation, and then as the
sound of running water from the bathroom ceased, stick his toes out
of bed.
The day was tremendously indicated. World-states and aristocracies
of steel and fire, things that were as real as coal-scuttles in
Billy's rooms away there at Cambridge, were now remoter than Sirius.
He was expected to shave, expected to bath, expected to go in to the
bright warmth and white linen and silver and china of his breakfast-
table. And there he found letters and invitations, loaded with
expectation.


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