Paid in Full

Front matter

PAID IN FULL

BY IAN HAY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 1925

Chapter 1

PAID IN FULL ∵

CHAPTER I

THE YOUNG IDEA

Denny Cradock, proceeding under easy steam across the Indian Ocean, swung majestically round the edge of a small coppice and brought up all standing, with much signalling and counter-signalling to the engine-room, beside the pier at Aden (a split rail fence with a gate in it).

Denny was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. Consequently, having no brother to play with, he was accustomed to invent games which a man can play by himself. It is true he possessed two sisters, Joan and Molly; but he would have shrunk with horror from the idea of inviting either to participate in his present exercises. Joan would have waxed extremely humorous over the idea of a boy of nearly fourteen solemnly pretending to be a P. & O. liner proceeding from Bombay to London; while Molly, though thrilled by the honour of the invitation and anxious to co-operate, would have been quite incapable of appreciating the technical niceties of the game.

Denny was an imaginative boy, a sensitive boy, and, above all, a self-conscious boy. Self-conscious people are apt to be secretive, and unless they are absolutely certain that you are a kindred spirit, they keep themselves to themselves and guard their own dreams. If you endeavour to penetrate within the sanctuary of their minds, even with the kindliest of intentions, they will sometimes go so far as to lie to you to put you off the scent. If asked to explain, for instance, why he was now standing motionless beside a split rail fence gazing into vacuity and making a noise like a muted trombone, Denny might—I say he might—have explained to his mother, who always understood, that he was coaling, and that the captain had ordered the ship’s band to play. But he most certainly would not have risked imparting such a confidence to an inquisitive and sardonically inclined young sister of twelve. He would have said that he was watching a bird’s nest—or, more simply, have recommended her to go home and burst.

Presently, having warped himself from Aden Pier with a lateral shuffle, Denny passed through the gate in the fence (the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb) and steamed up the Red Sea towards the Isthmus of Suez.

His course for the next few hundred miles being now set, he summoned a meeting of officers to the captain’s cabin and discussed within himself certain matters which promised shortly to send the good ship Denis Cradock sailing upon unknown and uncharted seas. For Denny had won a scholarship at Eaglescliffe, and was to depart for that ancient seminary of sound learning almost immediately. The last two days had been rather thrilling. When we are old, and the sheer adventure of leaving port and heading for the horizon has lost its glamour, we set out for China or Peru with as little concern or ceremony as a man walks down the street to buy a stamp at the post office. But the first breaking of home ties is a most solemn business. Denny had been bidding a systematic good-bye to the parish of Ripleigh for nearly a week. To-day matters were approaching the grand climax. He was on his way to a ceremonial tea-party of farewell at ‘Middlefield,’ the most considerable house in the district, the home—in fact, one might almost go so far as to call it the seat—of the Bagbys.

The Bagby ménage consisted of Mr. Bagby, a kind-hearted, fussy, utterly futile person of about fifty-five, and his lady wife, a few years younger, chiefly remarkable for a hypochrondriacal temperament and a yearning affection for an entirely unresponsive son and daughter. Mr. and Mrs. Bagby had married comparatively late in life—so late, indeed, that memories of their own childhood had long faded from their minds, with the result that they experienced some difficulty in understanding their offspring, or, indeed, the heart of youth at all. They assumed, for instance, that since their son Lionel—addressed by his doting mother as Little Leo, and referred to by the Cradock family among themselves as Lionel the Terrible—was roughly of an age with Denny Cradock and a near neighbour, that the two boys must as a matter of course be ‘great chums.’

‘Denny Cradock will not have your position later in life, darling,’ Mrs. Bagby once explained to her son. ‘His mother is only moderately well off, and she has three children to educate; but one should never allow social distinctions to influence one in one’s selection of one’s friends, should one? So you would like to invite Denny over to tea this afternoon, and have a romp with him in the plantations afterwards, wouldn’t you?’

‘No,’ replied Little Leo.

However, chums the boys were declared to be, despite Little Leo’s passionate asseverations to the contrary. He was a youth of high spirit, and the fact that his parents had decided upon one course of action was all that was required, as a rule, to send him automatically and victoriously in the opposite direction. Not that he disliked Denny. Secretly, he rather admired him—his muscle, his fleetness of foot, and his obvious abhorrence of such persons as himself—but a principle was at stake, and Lionel the Terrible was a true son of John Bull.

Denny, on his part, regarded his official chum as a milksop and an oaf. Otherwise he harboured no ill-feeling towards him whatever.

Having threaded the Suez Canal, a tortuous pathway between two clumps of laurel, Denny emerged into the Mediterranean—a broad pasture meadow with a stile in the far corner.

Seated on the stile, in the company of an upright gentleman just past middle age, was a little girl in a blue linen frock—a rather misleading little girl, with dreamy eyes and an appealing mouth and an aureole of bright golden hair. She looked like a cherub recently promoted to legs. In reality she was something entirely different—Denny’s sister Joan.

‘Here comes old Johnny Head-in-Air, Uncle Tony,’ she announced as Denny approached. ‘I bet you he’s pretending to be something, and hasn’t seen us.’

‘Pretending to be something?’

‘Yes. He’s quite mad. He always thinks he’s a train, or a man-of-war, or an aeroplane. You see—he’ll stop and blow off steam, or loop the loop, or something, in a minute.’

Uncle Tony chuckled.

‘You’re not imaginative, Joan,’ he suggested.

‘I’ve got some sense, if that’s what you mean,’ replied the young lady composedly. She inserted two slim fingers into her angelic mouth and emitted an ear-splitting whistle.

‘Hallo, star-gazer!’ she shouted. ‘What are you to-day? Wake up!’

Denny, deep in thought, suddenly called back to the realities of this world and the existence of unfeeling young sisters, came to himself with a start, blushed violently, and then tackled the situation with commendable and brotherly promptitude. He simply made a rush, tipped his sister over backwards into a conveniently adjacent heap of newly-mown grass, and took her seat upon the stile.

‘That will be all from you,’ he announced; then turned to his uncle and continued, as one man to another: ‘Hallo, Uncle Tony! I hope this kid hasn’t been bothering you.’

‘Not at all,’ replied Uncle Tony. ‘Joan is a most stimulating companion. Where are you off to this fine afternoon?’

‘Tea at Middlefield,’ replied Denny.

‘Don’t blush,’ urged Joan, resuming her perch and brushing wisps of grass from her short skirt. Naturally Denny blushed at once.

‘Is there romance connected with Middlefield?’ inquired Uncle Tony.

‘I’ve got to go and have tea with that little skunk Leo Bagby,’ explained Denny.

‘Lionel the Terrible,’ observed Joan. ‘He is hated by all.’

‘He doesn’t sound very romantic,’ said Uncle Tony.

‘A lady,’ announced Joan with a seraphic smile, ‘will also be present at the tea-party.’

‘Dry up, Joan!’ said Denny uneasily. He was suspected, not entirely without reason, of a youthful tenderness for Little Leo’s sister Gwen, a year or two his senior.

‘He’s blushing again. Isn’t he awful, Uncle Tony?’ demanded Joan compassionately.

‘Joan, you must learn to respect masculine reserve. It is a thing which young females know nothing about. Denny and I are in alliance against you on that point.’

‘All right,’ replied Joan affably. ‘I won’t rag him any more, as he’s going away so soon. How long are you going to stay at your party, Denny?’

‘About an hour, I suppose, unless Lionel the Terrible starts a fight with his father, or the governess, or anybody; then I may get out sooner.’

‘Well, don’t be long. Uncle Tony has promised to tell us some more stories about the I.C.S.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The Indian Civil Service,’ said Joan carelessly. ‘Didn’t you know?’

She had made an entire and bloodless conquest of her grand-uncle since his arrival from India a week ago, and was herself by this time a seasoned Anglo-Indian. At schoolroom meals she made a point of asking the respectfully mystified Molly to pass the pani or the dudh, and was full of mysterious and important references to such tremendous things as Memsahibs, and tiffin, and chota hazri.

‘Don’t show off,’ said Denny coldly. He turned to his godfather. ‘When are you going to begin, Uncle Tony?’

‘After tea, I believe.’

‘Wait till I come home, will you?’

‘Certainly. Is that agreeable to you, Joan?’

Joan affected to consider.

‘If you don’t turn up by six,’ she announced presently, ‘we’ll know that you’re washing Gwen’s dog for her, the same as last time, and we won’t wait. Come on, Uncle Tony! Mother will be expecting you.’

She slid off the fence and offered a braced shoulder.

‘Lean on me,’ she said, ‘and I’ll help you down.’

‘I am not yet entirely decrepit, Joan,’ replied Uncle Tony gravely; ‘but I appreciate the kind thought.’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Joan. ‘So long, Denny! Be good, my child, and give my love to dear little Gwenny.’

With this parting shot Miss Joan began to pilot her elderly relative back across the field in the direction of Abbot’s Mill, while a somewhat ruffled P. & O. liner resumed its voyage up the English Channel.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

LIONEL THE TERRIBLE

Five minutes later, Denny, emerging from Middlefield shrubberies, found himself close to the house. The late September sun was beginning to slant through the beech-trees on the lawn, dappling the ground beneath, and all was drowsy peace.

Denny, who was always a little shy of the Middlefield butler, avoided the front door and cut across the lawn towards the schoolroom. His course took him past the library. The French windows stood wide open, and within Denny was conscious of the form of a rather dapper little gentleman in tweeds, crouching in a constrained attitude over something in the middle of the room. It was Mr. Bagby. Hearing Denny’s step on the gravel, Mr. Bagby cried out, without moving:

‘Is that you, Leo? Come in here, sir, at once.’

‘It’s me, Mr. Bagby,’ replied Denny, pausing outside and politely removing his cap.

‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Come and give me a hand, will you, like a good chap? That young whelp has been at it again.’

Realising without difficulty that Mr. Bagby was referring to his only son, Denny entered the library by the open window. Mr. Bagby, holding a large piece of pink blotting paper in his hand, was executing a species of stealthy toe-dance round an inlaid lacquer table. In the centre of the table, serene and glistening, lay a large pool of ink; beside it a common penny ink-bottle, overturned.

‘Dirty little devil!’ observed Mr. Bagby earnestly, still referring, it seemed, to his absent offspring. ‘I told his mother not to let him come and make his messes in this room. But you know what women are!’

To this rather large assumption Denny made no reply. His attention was focused upon Mr. Bagby’s dispositions for the removal of the ink blot. He was a tidy and methodical man, was Mr. Bagby, and he prided himself on keeping his house in order. There was always an immaculate array of clean towels hanging in the bathroom at Middlefield, and Mr. Bagby’s knowledge of the current allowances on returned empties was almost indecent.

Very slowly and stealthily the pink blotting-paper slid over the polished table, until one corner touched the outer edge of the pool of ink.

‘This is the awkward bit,’ said Mr. Bagby breathlessly. ‘If the ink breaks away now—surface tension, and so on—it will run all over the place; on the carpet, probably. Stand by with some more blotting-paper, Denny, just in case— Why, damn the thing!’

For the pink pool did not break away, not even when the blotting-paper, after a moment’s hesitation, slid right over its glossy surface; not even when Mr. Bagby pressed the blotting-paper down with the tip of his finger. The paper still remained a virgin pink.

‘Surely the infernal stuff hasn’t solidified!’ Mr. Bagby placed the full weight of his palm upon the protuberance; then, with another regrettable exclamation, snatched the blotting-paper away and began to fumble for his monocle.

The ink pool lay as composed and as unruffled as ever. This was not altogether surprising, for it was composed of black sealing-wax, artistically moulded and varnished.

What Mr. Bagby said when he adjusted his monocle is irrelevant to this narrative, and was fortunately cut short at the very outset by a series of war-whoops of a raucous and penetrating character which burst from behind a sofa in the corner of the room.

‘Ee-ee-ee! A-a-ah! Oo-oo-ooh! Sold again! Sold again! Silly old Bingo! Sold again!’

And Master Lionel Bagby, vacating his ambush, shot from the open doorway into the hall and disappeared through a curtained arch on the other side, yodelling triumphantly.

Denny, tactfully leaving the overwrought Mr. Bagby to himself, slipped out of the room after his 'chum' and, travelling familiar ground, proceeded down a linoleum-covered passage in the direction of the schoolroom, where he knew that the feast to which he had been invited would be spread. Even as he entered the passage a maid debouched from another doorway, carrying a loaded tray which exuded an agreeable aroma of poached eggs and hot muffins.

Gathered in the schoolroom Denny found Mrs. Bagby herself, present in his honour; Miss Groves, Gwen’s governess; Lionel the Terrible, still chanting his song of victory; and the present disturber of his peace, Miss Gwendoline Bagby. Denny shook hands rather shyly all round, that susceptible and elastic organ, his heart, missing a beat or two when he greeted the daughter of the house. Mrs. Bagby took the head, Miss Groves the foot of the table. Master Lionel, who was a dirty feeder and required considerable elbow-room, was accommodated with a side to himself. Denny and Gwen sat together.

Mrs. Bagby, having helped the others, addressed her son with an indulgent smile.

‘Little Leo,’ she said, ‘will you have a poached egg?’

‘Yes,’ replied Little Leo.

‘Yes—what, dear?’

‘What? An egg, of course. Don’t be silly!’

Mrs. Bagby smiled feebly.

‘I am waiting for a certain little word, darling,’ she said.

‘And I,’ riposted Lionel the Terrible, ‘am waiting for a certain little poached egg!’

Mrs. Bagby made another effort.

‘If you—?’ she prompted.

‘If you don’t give me one,’ roared Little Leo, in a most threatening voice. ‘I shall come and take one. So hurry up!’

Mrs. Bagby, finding the situation, as usual, beyond her, smiled resignedly and passed the egg.

Gwen began to question Denny about his scholarship. When he told her that it was worth sixty pounds a year she was visibly impressed, and Denny turned pink with gratification.

‘It doesn’t mean much, really,’ he said modestly.

‘What are you going to do with the money?’ asked Gwen.

‘I don’t think you get any money; they just knock sixty pounds off your school bill.’

Lionel the Terrible here interposed, to remark that when he won a scholarship he would spend the money on himself and not go to school at all. Having disposed of this topic to his entire satisfaction, he helped himself to jam with an eggy knife.

‘What house are you going to, Denis?’ asked Miss Groves.

‘Keeley’s.’

Miss Groves’s thin face flushed with pleasure.

‘My brother was there,’ she said, ‘long ago.’

‘What a rotten house it must have been,’ observed Little Leo.

As it appeared to be nobody’s business to controvert this statement, Miss Groves continued, timidly:

‘Of course it was some time ago. My brother has been vicar of Much Moreham for many years now. Will you ask Mr. Keeley if he still remembers him?’

Denny promised to do so, and furthermore undertook to write and tell Miss Groves if Mr. Keeley did remember her brother. The ice thus artfully broken, he asked if Gwen would like him to write to her too.

‘Rather!’ said Gwen. ‘Tell me all your troubles, my child, whenever you feel like it.’

‘Shall I write to you as well, Leo?’ asked Denny, turning away a little dashed.

‘No,’ replied the Terrible One.

‘Leo, darling!’ interposed his mother. ‘No—what?’

‘No blooming fear!’ explained her offspring. ‘I should have to read the thing. Hello, here’s Bingo!’

The schoolroom door was wrenched open, and the master of the house stood lowering upon the threshold.

‘Leo,’ he announced with an air of intense resolution, ‘I shall whip you to-night before dinner.’

‘No you won’t,’ replied his son calmly.

‘But I shall!’ repeated Mr. Bagby with less conviction.

‘No, you won’t!’ bellowed Lionel the Terrible. Finding his utterance somewhat impeded by bread and jam, he took a large gulp of tea, and continued: ‘What’s the good? It only hurts your hand, and makes me laugh. Look out—you’re treading on something!’

There were cries of concern from Mrs. Bagby.

‘Ring for Hannah!’ she exclaimed. ‘She must have dropped it off the dish. How careless of her! Don’t touch it with your fingers, Miss Groves. Take the coal shovel.’

But Miss Groves, who, whatever she might lack in assertiveness, was not deficient in common-sense, merely stooped down, picked up the jettisoned poached egg between her finger and thumb, and laid it on the table close beside its engaging proprietor. It really was a capital imitation. The streaming yolk in particular did credit to the designer.

Little Leo was once more bounding about the room.

‘Sold again! Sold again!’ he yelled. ‘Silly old Bingo! Silly old Bingo! Sold again!’

After tea the infant humorist summoned his reluctant guest from the side of his sister, and conducted him upstairs, where he revealed to him the source of his present playful inspirations. It was a Conjurer’s Catalogue, entitled ‘Amusing Jokes and Novel Surprises.’

‘You get six jokes in a box for half a crown,’ he explained. ‘The poached egg, and the spilt ink thing, and another like spilt jam, and a bandage all bloody that you stick round your finger to make people think you’ve cut it—Gwen fairly blubbed when she saw it on me—and an imitation wasp, and some india-rubber bugs you drop into people’s soup. The catalogue says the bugs are also Suitable for Beds. I haven’t used them yet. Half a jiffy! I’ll slip down to the drawing-room now, and put them on mother’s tea-table.’

The horrid child sped away, and before Denny could summon sufficient courage to go back to the schoolroom in search of Gwen, returned enraptured, announcing that two beetles now floated in the cream-jug, while the wasp occupied a conspicuous position upon the seat which would shortly be occupied by his father.

‘I got a ten bob tip last week,’ he continued, gloating over the catalogue, ‘and I’m going to order some more—real spiffers this time. The first lot were all as stale as anything, but of course they were quite new to Mum and Bingo. Here’s something. The Mysterious Voice. With this little novelty any one can make the exact imitation of a kitten mewing, while all your friends are wondering where it is. Very amusing and quite new. That’s rotten. All you do is to hold a sort of bag in your hand and squeeze it, or else put it down for some one to sit on.... Here’s something better. The Plush Jewel Case. This little box is in the form of a small jewel case. When your friend opens it, it gives a loud bang, causing much laughter among the onlookers. I dare say, but it’s two bob. What’s this? The Crash-Bang. This consists of six metal pieces which are thrown against a wall. They give the exact representation of a window being broken. Sixpence. I’ll get a set of those for Bingo. Hallo! The Red Hot Cinder. One of these cinders placed on the hearth-rug causes great consternation, followed by merriment, and calls forth exclamations of ‘How good!’ when picked up. Fourpence. You ought to take some of these to Eaglescliffe with you, Denny. You could rag the masters fearfully.’

‘I think I’ll have a look at the masters first,’ replied Denny.

Lionel finally settled upon two more purchases—namely, some Nihilist Bombs, one of which, exploded in a theatre or railway carriage, will cause people on the spot to gradually get away as far as possible, and the Electric Bell—which you fasten to a table or wall and ask your friend to ring it. To his great surprise, he pricks his finger. Roars of laughter! Tenpence—and then suggested a visit to the orchard.

Denny, supremely bored, acquiesced. His sole interest in the House of Bagby was centred—and that, as time was to prove, but temporarily—in the female branch. Besides, the morrow, with its unrevealed and half-feared mysteries, was tugging at his thoughts, rendering him even more impervious than usual to the charms of Little Leo’s society. To some of us any company is better than none—which, by the way, accounts for most of the undesirable friendships of this world. Denny was one of the rarer spirits. He desired only the society of the congenial; failing that, he preferred his own. Such society, at the moment, was represented to him solely by Miss Gwendoline Bagby; in a few months time he would have revised his standards completely, and be living only for the occasional patronage of brawny youths who could run faster or manipulate a ball more skilfully than himself. But, in the main, Master Denny was a lady’s man, as the future will unfold. In other words, he was booked for trouble for many years to come. Meanwhile, his sole preoccupation was a single-minded aversion to the continued society of Little Leo.

However, an apple is seldom amiss when you are thirteen. So he accompanied his host to the orchard. On the way Little Leo espied two beetles scuttling across the gravel path. He picked them up and secured them, with an air of professional secrecy, in an old pill-box.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

MILDRED CRADOCK

In due course that capable young person Joan Cradock piloted her great-uncle back to Abbot’s Mill. Here she led the way to the sunny drawing-room on the west side of the house. The room was empty.

‘Mother will be here in a moment,’ said Joan. ‘I expect she’s out with Molly somewhere, as usual. Molly’s the pet, you know. Will you have some brandy, or some champagne, or something, till tea is ready? I know where the key of the cellar is.’

Sir Anthony declined this hospitable offer, and, straying to the open window, looked out up the river.

‘What a landscape!’ he said. ‘Ah me! it’s almost worth while living in the Central Provinces of India for the whole of one’s working life to revisit such a scene as this occasionally.’

‘You wait until it rains!’ suggested the matter-of-fact Miss Cradock. Sir Anthony laughed.

‘My dear, it is possible to live in a country where people pray for rain—or rather, would pray for rain if they knew what it was. But they don’t, so they can’t. I come from a place rather like that. To me a British wet day is as refreshing as—what shall we say?’

‘Strawberry ice-cream?’

‘Let us say as Balm in Gilead—whatever that may be. What is that strip of water out there?’

‘That’s Ripleigh Reach. You ought to see it on a Sunday afternoon,’ said Joan who, like most of her sex, was more interested in persons than places. ‘Couples in punts come and moor under those willows all along the bank. They get so cross if you go near them. Denny and I have a lot of fun that way.’

‘What is that island?’

‘That’s Abbot’s Island.’

‘It appears to split the river almost evenly.’

‘Yes. There is a weir on the far side; the lock is on this side. Of course that gives mother fits all day long.’

‘And why should it give mother fits?’

‘Because she has quite made up her mind that we are all going to be drowned there some day. The only thing she hasn’t quite settled is the order of going in. Hallo, here she is! Now you’ll get your tea.’

Mildred Cradock, dressed in white, was approaching from the landing-stage at the foot of the lawn. For the mother of three lusty children, she looked absurdly young. She was tall and slim, and her figure so far appeared to have escaped that calamity known among the victims as ‘middle-aged spread.’ She looked little more than twenty-five, though she was ten years older. Her face beneath her white felt boating-hat was soft and round, and her expression, especially when she looked at her children, both whimsical and tender. She had the easy smile and the comprehending eyes which mark people of a large and tolerant sense of humour. But if you regarded her face closely in a strong light—assuming that you were so ungallant as to do such a thing—you would have observed two little lines running from the curve of each nostril to the corners of her mouth—lines which usually indicate a woman who has had once or twice to set her face resolutely towards the facts of life and practise the art of keeping a stiff upper lip. But the lines were not visible now—nothing but the superficial preoccupation of a conscientious hostess.

‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting for tea, Uncle Tony,’ she said, as she entered the drawing-room window. ‘Molly took me out in the punt, and—well, we found the punt-pole a little too long for us, didn’t we, Molly?’

She looked down affectionately upon the small figure at her side—a little girl of nine, with a mop of black curly hair, dark blue eyes, and a countenance rendered crimson by recent exertion.

‘I did,’ corrected Molly. She was a literal and truthful child, lacking Joan’s worldly poise. Her voice was deeper, too. Altogether Molly took life more seriously than her elder sister.

‘The pole stuck in the mud,’ she announced gravely to Sir Anthony, ‘and it nearly pulled me in. But mother held on to my frock, and we got it out. Some of the gathers gave way.’

‘The gathers?’

‘Yes. Look.’

Molly turned round, in order to afford her great-uncle a better view of her disordered raiment. Her mother interrupted hastily.

‘Now, chick, run off upstairs to your tea, and leave Uncle Tony and me in peace. Take Molly upstairs, Joan.’

‘Righto!’ replied Joan. ‘Come on, Mophead! I’ll race you. You go through the house and I’ll go round by the garden.’

The challenge was precipitately accepted, and with a wild shriek the two ladies shot out of the door and window respectively, and were no more seen.

Sir Anthony chuckled gently, and sat down in an armchair. His hostess, having rung for tea, sat down beside him and took his hand affectionately.

‘Dear Uncle Tony,’ she said, ‘don’t think me a terribly demonstrative female, but you don’t know how I enjoy having you here, even for such a flying visit. After all these years, too. I do wish you could stay longer.’

‘Carried unanimously! But the British Empire must be governed somehow, and sometimes. That reminds me, I have promised to discourse after tea to Joan upon the inner workings of the Indian Civil Service. I think she imagines I black myself all over and listen behind trees to Thugs and Dacoits.’

‘Don’t let her bother you.’

‘It’s a pleasure. Your children are very companionable, Mildred.’

Mildred flushed with pleasure. It was easy to see where her treasure was laid up.

‘You don’t think Joan is too precocious?’ she asked, obviously hoping to be contradicted.

‘She’s got her head screwed on the right way, if that’s what you mean. But that doesn’t prevent her heart from being in the right place.’

‘I am glad to hear you say that, because sometimes she seems to me just a little harder—a little more difficult to mould—than the other two.’

‘Joan’s all right. Her head just about balances the other organ, I should say. In the case of the other two, the balance inclines a little bit towards what magazine editors call “heart interest”—eh? They get that from their mother, I imagine.’

‘What makes you think that? Do you accuse me of being sentimental?’

Before Uncle Tony could frame a tactful reply to this leading question, the door opened and a grim-faced maid entered with the tea.

‘Out on the veranda, please, Thwaites,’ said Mildred.

‘You’d better have it in here,’ replied Thwaites calmly.

‘But it’s quite warm and sunny outside.’

‘It’s September, and a cold in the head is a cold in the head any time of the year. There’s your tea. Drink it up while it’s hot; it won’t improve with talk.’ And, having planted the tea-tray on its usual table, Thwaites departed composedly to her own place.

Mildred made a little moue.

‘You see how I am treated by my staff!’ she said.

‘A privileged retainer, I should say.’

‘You’re right; she is. She was my maid in the old days. When I became the mother of a growing family a maid looked like an extravagance, so I turned her into a parlourmaid. She wages perpetual warfare with the children, but they love one another really.’