"Oh you've been wondering about that?" Mr. Humfries seemed amused. "Well, the answer's simple. They couldn't afford it. Unless-"

He paused.

"Unless you make special prices for them? Is that it?"

"More or less. They don't really know, usually, that they are special prices, or if they do realize it, they think it's because they're old customers."

"And it isn't just that?"

"Well, Colonel Luscombe, I am running a hotel. I couldn't afford actually to lose money."

"But how can that pay you?"

"It's a question of atmosphere… Strangers coming to this country-Americans, in particular, because they are the ones who have the money-have their own rather queer ideas of what England is like. I'm not talking, you understand, of the rich business tycoons who are always crossing the Atlantic. They usually go to the Savoy or the Dorchester. They want modern decor, American food, all the things that will make them feel at home. But there are a lot of people who come abroad at rare intervals and who expect this country to be-well, I won't go back as far as Dickens, but they've read Cranford and Henry James, and they don't want to find this country just the same as their own! So they go back home afterwards and say: 'There's a wonderful place in London; Bertram's Hotel, it's called. It's just like stepping back a hundred years. It just is old England! And the people who stay there! People you'd never come across anywhere else. Wonderful old duchesses. They serve all the old English dishes, there's a marvellous old-fashioned beefsteak pudding! You've never tasted anything like it; and great sirloins of beef and saddles of mutton, and an old-fashioned English tea and a wonderful English breakfast. And of course all the usual things as well. And it's wonderfully comfortable. And warm. Great log fires.'"

Mr. Humfries ceased his impersonation and permitted himself something nearly approaching a grin.