The Summer of Sir Lancelot

the brace of boiled eggs cosy in their little woolly jumpers, the neat toast in its silver rack, the coffee pot exhaling so fragrantly. He continued in a fruity voice, ‘I do not wish to sound legalistic, but I think I must point out that I am the Master now.‘
    ‘Oh, no, sir,‘ she insisted politely. ‘Sir Lancelot will always be the Master to me.‘
    ‘Is that,‘ he demanded sternly, ‘my Times?
    ‘It was the one in the hall, sir.‘
    ‘If you please, Mrs Chuffey!‘ He held out his hand. ‘At least I shall insist on reading my newspaper first, even if I must eat my breakfast second. What damn cheek!‘ he added as the cook carried the tray upstairs. ‘Thank heavens the fellow is going to decamp before lunch.‘
    He stared grimly through the dining room window at a hazy summer‘s Saturday morning in Harley Street. It had seemed such a sound idea when his sister Maud had suggested a few weeks before that he rent her London house. The delightful new home Mr Nightrider was building in Kent had progressed at the speed of the pyramids, suddenly leaving his family roofless. Anyway, he wanted to stay the summer in town, having added to his duties in the House and in the Chair of both St Swithin‘s Governors and the National Council of Morals, Chairmanship of the new Committee of Commonwealth Culture — he collected committees as other men collect stamps or wives. The rent was pretty stiff, of course. But Harley Street was delightfully central, the house big enough comfortably to entertain cultured guests from the Commonwealth, the furniture was tasteful, the cook was in residence. And his brother-in-law, Sir Lancelot, was permanently occupied fishing in Wales.
    Mr Nightrider rubbed a chin like the front of a tank. A fair and righteous man, he had felt it only proper to lodge Sir Lancelot in the spare room for his night in London. Though he found his company as congenial as a dental abscess — the man seemed to have no respect whatever for Governors of hospitals or of anything else — he felt a second night‘s hospitality reasonable when his brother-in-law pronounced himself exhausted with frustrating and unfinished business. He now hoped the goodness of his heart wouldn‘t have to show further elasticity.
    ‘If only I had not to preserve the dignity of a Member of Parliament,‘ he muttered, ‘how I would give that fellow a piece of my mind!‘
    He sat down and started reading The Times, wondering when breakfast was going to appear. It did in twenty minutes, simultaneously with Sir Lancelot.
    ‘My dear fellow, good morning, good morning,‘ the surgeon began heartily. ‘What a good omen this mist is! When it clears by and by, it will help Jowler get a bit of movement off the wicket.‘
    ‘I am afraid I am not familiar with the niceties of cricket. Tennis is a more rewarding spectacle to me, and I hope on Tuesday to take advantage of my ticket to Wimbledon.‘
    ‘Girls in frilly knickers playing pat-ball,‘ Sir Lancelot dismissed it genially. ‘Do get on with your breakfast if you want, Geoff. I‘ve had mine.‘
    ‘So I noticed.‘
    ‘Good gracious, man, you don‘t cat that Beaulieu‘s marmalade stuff, do you?‘ added the surgeon. ‘You know they soak the oranges in sulphuric acid till the skins drop off? Where‘s the paper?‘ he demanded, looking round.
    ‘I don‘t know, but possibly my wife or Hilda have it in their rooms,‘ replied Mr Nightrider bleakly.
    He had just hidden it under the cushion of the armchair, being fond in the evening of doing the crossword, which Sir Lancelot mutilated briskly on sight.
    ‘I don‘t suppose anything interesting‘s happened.‘ Sir Lancelot settled in the chair and lit his pipe. ‘Though I always miss The Times. It does one good to have at least one real laugh a day.‘
    ‘You mean the Fourth Leaders? I myself sometimes find them quite amusing.‘
    ‘Good grief, no! There‘s no need to be deliberately funny in The Times, any more than to be deliberately funny in Punch. Do get on with your bacon, Geoff, it‘ll be quite disgusting cold.‘
    You may remember we last saw Sir Lancelot standing on the pavement outside a fishing shop, radiating black thoughts like gamma rays from a radioactive isotope. Now he was staring benevolently at his brother-in-law forking up breakfast, with an air of docility suggesting he‘d undergone the leucotomy Tim Tolly suggested. Why, you may ask, this surprising change of mood? I‘ll tell you. It was through a