“Let true love take its course,” he remarked to Bobby Browne one day, after they had hearkened to Deppingham’s furious complaint that he couldn’t find Saunders when he wanted him if he happened to be wanted simultaneously by Miss Pelham.  “Miss Pelham is a fine girl.  Your wife likes her and looks after her.  She’s a clever girl, much cleverer than Saunders would be if he were a girl.  She’s found out that he earns a thousand a year and that his mother is a very old woman.  That shows foresight.  She says she’s just crazy about London, although she doesn’t know where Hammersmith is.  That shows discretion.  She’s anxious to see the boats at Putney and talks like an encyclopaedia about Kew Gardens.  That shows diplomacy.  You see, Saunders lives in Hammersmith, not far from the bridge, all alone with his mother, who owns the house and garden.  It’s all very appealing to Miss Pelham, who has got devilish tired of seeing the universe from a nineteenth story in Broadway.  I heard her tell Saunders that she keeps a couple of geranium pots on the window sill near which she sits all day.  She says she’s keen about garden flowers.  Looks serious to me.”

“She’s a very nice girl,” agreed Bobby Browne.

“A very saucy one,” added Deppingham, who had come a severe cropper in his single attempt to interest her in a mild flirtation.

“She’s off with Saunders now,” went on Britt.  “That’s why you can’t find him, my lord.  If you really want him, however, I think you can reach him by strolling through the lower end of the park and shouting.  For heaven’s sake, don’t fail to shout.”

“I do want him, confound him.  I want to ask him how many days there are left before our time is up on the island.  Demmed annoying, that I can’t have legal advice when I—­”

“How many days have you been here?”

“How the devil should I know?  That’s what we’ve got Saunders here for.  He’s supposed to tell us when to go home, and all that sort of thing, you know.”

“It isn’t going to be so bad, now that the Princess has come to cheer us up a bit,” put in Bobby Browne.  “Life has a new aspect.”

“I say, Browne,” burst out Deppingham, irrelevantly, his eyeglass clenched in the tight grasp of a perplexed frown, “would you mind telling me that story about the bishop and the door bell again?”

Britt laughed hoarsely, his chubby figure shivering with emotion.  “You’ve heard that story ten times, to my certain knowledge, Deppingham.”

His lordship glared at him.  “See here, Britt, you’ll oblige me by—­”

“Very well,” interrupted Britt readily.  “I forget once in a while.”

“The trouble with you Americans is this,” growled Deppingham, turning to Browne and speaking as if Britt was not in existence:  “you have no dividing line.  ’Gad, you wouldn’t catch Saunders sticking his nose in where he wasn’t wanted.  He’s—­”

“I was under the impression that you wanted him,” interrupted Britt, most good-naturedly, his stubby legs far apart, his hands in his pockets.