I mentioned to Parker only the other day that I’d like to have the smallest griffon that could be got. He cabled to wherever griffons come from, and ten turned up the other morning, such wee, wee mites, with black faces and no noses. It’s impossible for anyone to say which of them is the smallest, so I’ve had to keep the lot. It’s too absurd! But about my birthday present; if you will keep interrupting me I shall never get on. All the finest pearls in the world were got together, but the feature of the whole thing was to be twenty-two pearls, which were to come from I’m not supposed to know from where, but I do know that they were to come from Russia.” The listener pricked up her ears at this. “They were to be something altogether out of the common, gems in every sense of the word. I don’t
