Highland Fling Read Online Free PDF

organ to peal forth. It rather reminds me of our wedding in some ways.’
    ‘More like a mausoleum, really. D’you see that very old man over there?’
    ‘I see the seven oldest living creatures, if you mean one of them.’
    ‘The one with the greenish face over by the statue of Queen Victoria.’
    ‘My dear, I hadn’t noticed him. But how awful! Can’t we help in some way? Is he dying?’
    ‘Oh, I expect sort of vaguely he is. This place mummifies people you know, without their having to die first, and they often go on creeping about like that for years. That’s why they’re called Die Hards. It is a most descriptive name for them, poor old sweets. Anyway, that particular one is a great friend of daddy’s, and he disinherited his eldest son for marrying a Catholic.’
    ‘Not really? It’s rather heavenly to think such people do still exist. What happened to the son, though – was he quite broke?’
    ‘Oh, no, not at all; the Catholic was immensely rich. So, to pay the old boy out, they took the grouse moor next to his in Scotland and started a stoat and weasel farm on it and quite soon all his grouse were eaten up by the weasels. Daddy says he never got over it – it nearly broke his heart.’
    Walter looked round him for a few minutes in silence. ‘I haven’t seen anybody the least aristocratic-looking yet,’ he remarked presently, ‘except, of course, the boyfriend who is by way of informing your aunt that we are here. He’s a lovely man, but all the others look exactly like very old and decrepit doctors. I can imagine any of them pulling out a thermometer and saying, “Well, well, and how are we today? Put out your tongue and say ‘Ah.’ ” Now, there is rather a spry-looking one by the door. He might be a dentist or a
masseur
. What’s the muttering about in the next room?’
    ‘Someone making a speech. Uncle Craig, most likely, as they’re all trooping out. They can put up with a lot here (they have to, poor angels!), but it’s only the ones who can’t walk that stay and listen to Uncle Craig, and you should see the expression on their faces when they realize what they’re in for – pitiful, like trapped animals!
    ‘I heard him speak once about the peeresses in their own right who want to sit in the House of Lords. It was quite unintelligible and no wonder. His only real reason for not wanting them is that he thinks they might have to use the peers’lavatory, and, of course, he couldn’t
say
that. Another time he was speaking on the Prayer Book, but somehow he got all his notes mixed up so the last half of his speech was all about new sewers for Bixton. Nobody noticed, of course, and he was able to square the reporters afterwards. Such an old duck, you know, but not exactly cut out to be a legislator.’
    ‘It has often occurred to me to wonder, if there were a revolution tomorrow, how the mob would know which were the nobles,’ said Walter. ‘Personally I’ve always been terrified that I should be left behind when all my friends were being hurried off in the tumbrils to the echoing cry of, “
A bas les aristos!
” Never mind, I shall have my turn next day when the intelligentsia is being wiped out.’
    ‘On the contrary, my angel, you’ll hang about hoping for weeks, until at last, after all your acquaintances have died gloriously in front of Buckingham Palace or the Albert Memorial, you’ll be pitched into the Thames with the other
bourgeois
.’
    ‘Of course, it just would be one’s luck. Now who’d mind going to the scaffold between Lord Lonsdale and Mrs Meyrick! It would give one a social kick, you know. Think of the papers next day!
    ‘ “Among others I noticed on the scaffold yesterday Walter Monteath, the poet, was wearing his favourite green tie and chatting to Lord Lonsdale. He told me that his wife was busy at the moment but hopes to attend the executions today. Picture on back page.”
    ‘But as for all those old peers, they’ll have to parade up and down