“Well, if you will have a father who owns a private bank, what can you expect?” replied the second voice with a similar Old Etonian accent. And two young men came into view, one of them wearing a bowler hat and carrying a brolly, the other accompanied by a porter and the requisite mountain of luggage. They were a little older than I; in fact, I thought I recognized one of them as a one-time dance partner at a hunt ball. For a second we almost made eye contact, but then his gaze moved on without a flicker of recognition, as if he couldn’t possibly know someone wearing a cabbage-stained apron and doling out soup.

“Not all of us are going to inherit a title and an estate, old chap,” the first man said.

“We might still have the title and the estate but we’re stony broke like everyone else these days,” the other replied. “Can’t even afford to stay at the Negresco this year. If I didn’t have an aunt with a villa, I don’t know what I’d do. Still, a couple of visits to the casinos should make up for the meager allowance the old man gives me. With a little bit of luck, what?” And he laughed, an exaggerated haw, haw, haw sound.

They moved away, their voices lost in the puffing of a steam engine and the shouts of porters. As I watched them go, another voice rose clearly over the station hubbub. “Do watch out with my luggage, porter, or the whole lot will come crashing down.”

I turned to see a veritable Matterhorn of trunks, valises and hatboxes heading my way on a trolley, pushed by a red-faced and struggling porter, while behind it, carrying a small crocodile train case in one hand, a cigarette holder in the other, came my dearest friend, Belinda Warburton-Stoke.

“Belinda!” I called, dropping the ladle and wiping my hands on my apron as I ran toward her.

She looked up, confused for a moment; then a big smile spread across her face as she recognized me. “Georgie! Good God. What on earth are you doing here?”

“Obviously not on my way to the Continent like you, you lucky old thing,” I said. “I would hug you, but I’m rather carrot encrusted at the moment.”

“Er—yes, I can see.” She took a step backward, moving her gorgeous fox fur coat out of danger. “So you’re still doing your Girl Guide good deeds at the soup kitchen. Positively destined for sainthood, darling.”