I suppose I
must put in an appearance at this reception, but if I happen to pass
another piece of carpet on the way to the house, and the people going
in seem more attractive than our lot, I shall be tempted to join them.
This is, perhaps, the worst part of the ceremony, this three hundred
yards or so from the hymn-sheets to the champagne. All London is now
gazing at my old top-hat. When the war went on and on and on, and it
seemed as though it were going on for ever, I looked back on peace
much as those old retired warriors at the end of last century looked
back on their happy Crimean days; and in the same spirit as that in
which they hung their swords over the baronial fireplace, I decided to
suspend my old top-hat above the mantel-piece in the drawing-room. In
the years to come I would take my grandchildren on my knee and tell
them stories of the old days when grandfather was a civilian, of
desperate charges by church-wardens and organists, and warm
receptions; and sometimes I would hold the old top-hat reverently in
my hands, and a sudden gleam would come into my eyes, so that those
watching me would say to each other, "He is thinking of that
tea-fight at Rutland Gate in 1912.
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