132 STRAY- AW AYS 



beamed upon me and held out his right; I attached 

 myself to it, and the whole room advanced to dinner, 

 three deep, like a figure of the Lancers. 



Seldom have two more festive hours fallen to my 

 share than those that followed. My partner remem- 

 bered astonishingly well as much English as may be 

 picked up in a month once spent at Newcastle; I 

 remembered astonishingly badly such German as may 

 be learned in a year from an English governess; my 

 pendant on the other side knew only Danish ; but 

 when three people are equally penetrated by a sense 

 of duty to their neighbour, language is a secondary 

 matter. We presided, in triple state, at the head of 

 the table, an honour that seemed almost excessive, 

 till, in the calmer observation that comes with the 

 fish, I discovered, across the piled-up fruits and flowers, 

 our hostess sitting at the middle of one of the sides ; 

 further away I sighted my second cousin, talking to an 

 elderly Count with a dignity but slightly marred by 

 fish-bones, and then I was called on to bow over a glass 

 of hock in response to the lifted glass and the bow of 

 some one in the vicinity. The proceeding was re- 

 peated in champagne and Lafite before dinner was 

 over, and seemed to the unaccustomed a sociable 

 and picturesque survival, but one requiring the kind of 

 head that grew in the last century, in the days when 

 the copper barrel that gleamed on the sideboard 

 did not hold too much wine for a dinner-party at 

 Rathlousdahl. 



Wlien at last the finger-glasses with their floating 

 marguerites came, in cool sequel to the banquet's 

 long and strange artifice, my companion was talking 

 English like a native, and my progress in Danish had 

 extended to the discovery that the only means by 

 which the foreigner can hope to pronounce it is by 

 putting out the tongue slightly and moaning along it. 



