Dodo and the Brick

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Home, March 1923, as The Brick¹; collected in Fine Feathers (1994)
Approx. 5,000 words
(First read 24/12/1994)

Dodo's ~ for it is she ~ 60th birthday ball is on the horizon.  The passing years have made her no less insufferable, though Benson would disagree.

The somewhat remarkable exploits of her youth were already growing legendary; she had had her heyday before the golden girls and boys of the present generation were born [...]  She combined somehow the wisdom of experience with the dash of the adventuring pilgrim, and the golden youth flocked around her.

Yeah, whatever.  Delicia Brick ("It sounds like a racehorse running into a stone wall"), meantime, is a social-climbing parvenue who would chew her own arm off to be invited to said ball.  Needless to say, our ageing windbag is having none of it.  Needless to say, also, it ends with that old Bensonian chestnut:

'Dear Mrs Brick [...]  How perfectly delightful of you to dispense with the formality of an invitation and look in on us.'

Exactly how many times did EFB use this particular joke?  Answers on a postcard please to the usual address.
The story is available in Fine Feathers and Other Stories (1994)¹. 

¹ Why Mr Jack Adrian, the editor of Fine Feathers, saw fit to retitle this story, if it hadn't already been retitled by someone else, I've no idea.

THE CRITICS

Another amusing episode in the career of Dodo.

~Cork Examiner, 08/03/1923