from
Urquhart. He proposed for herself and Lancelot to go to the play with
him. The play, _Raffles_, "which ought to meet the case," he said. He
added, "I don't include Macartney in this jaunt, partly because he
won't want to come, but mainly because there won't be room for him. I
am taking a nephew, one Bob Nugent, an Osborne boy, but very gracious
to poor civilians like Lancelot and me." He signed himself, "Yours to
command."

Lucy was pleased, and accepted promptly; and Lancelot was pleased when
he heard of it. His hackles were up at the graciousness of the Osborne
kid. He honked over it like a heron. "Ho! I expect you'll tell him
that I'm R. E., or going to be," he said, which meant that he himself
certainly would. The event, with subsequent modifications on the
telephone, proved to be the kind of evening that Lancelot's
philosophy had never dreamed of. They dined at the Cafe Royal, where
Urquhart pointed out famous Anarchists and their wives to his young
guests; they went on to the theatre in what he called a 'bus, but
Lancelot saw to be a mighty motor which rumbled like a volcano at
rest, and proceeded by a series of violent rushes, accompanied by
explosions of a very dangerous kind. The whole desperate passage,
short as it was, had the right feeling of law-breaking about it.
Policemen looked reproachfully at them as they fled on. Lancelot, as
guest of honour, sat in front, and wagged his hand like a semaphore at
all times and in all faces; he felt part policeman and part
malefactor, which was just right. Then they thrilled at the smooth and
accomplished villainy of Mr. Du Maurier, lost not one line of his
faultless clothes, nor one syllable of his easy utterance, "like
treacle off a spoon," said Urquhart; and then they tore back through
the starry night to Onslow Square, leaving in their wake the wrecks
and salvage of a hundred frail taxis; finally, from the doorstep waved
the Destroyer, as the boys agreed she should be called, upon her
ruthless course, listened to the short and fierce bursts of her wrath
until she was lost in the great sea of sound; and then--replete to
speechlessness--Lancelot looked up to his mother and squeezed her
hand. She saw that his eyes were full. "Well, darling?" she said. "You
liked all that?" Lancelot had recovered himself. He let go her hand.
His reply was majestic. "Not bad," he said. Lucy immediately hugged
him.

Now that was exactly what James would have said, _mutatis mutandi