“Thank you very much, but I prefer helping myself,” she said curtly to Rory; his attentiveness seemed to her a direct reflection on Arnold, who never waited on any one. Nor did she encourage his attempts at conversation. “I have been telling Miss Concha....” “I do hope you’ll take me round the garden—I know all about that sort of thing, I do really.”
It was a superb day, and the sun was beating fiercely on the tightly-shut windows; the room smelt of sausages and bacon and tea and soap and hair-wash. Teresa felt that the sight of the pulpy eviscera of Arnold’s roll would soon make her sick.
“By the way, where’s the Scot?” said Concha. “Arnold, hadn’t you better go up and find him?”
A scuffling was heard behind the door, and in burst Anna and Jasper, having, in spite of Nanny, simply scrambled through their nursery breakfast, as thrilled as ’Snice himself by the smell of new people. Jasper was all wriggling and squeaking in his desire for attention; Anna, outwardly calmer, was wondering whether Rory had relations abroad, and whether they wrote to him, and what the stamps on the envelopes were like.
“Now then, gently, darlings, gently! Wait a minute; here you are, Jasper,” and the Doña held out to him a spoonful of honey.
“But where is our good Scot?” repeated Concha.
“The worst of going up to Cambridge is that one never goes down,” shouted Guy to Jollypot, for want of a better audience; whereupon, regardless of the fact that Guy was still talking, Jollypot began to repeat to herself in a low, emotional voice:
Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.
Jasper began to wriggle worse than ever, and, having first cast a furtive glance at his grandmother and aunts, said shrilly, “I dreamt of Mummie last night ... and she had ... she had ... such a funny nose....” and his voice tailed off in a little giggle, half proud, half guilty.
“Jasper!” exclaimed simultaneously the Doña, Teresa, Concha, and Anna, in tones of shocked reproval.
Shortly after her death, Jasper had genuinely dreamt that his mother was standing by his bed, and, on telling it next morning, had produced a most gratifying impression; but so often had he tried since to produce the same impression in the same way that to say he had “dreamt of Mummie” had become a recognised form of “naughtiness”; and, as one could attract attention by naughtiness as well as by pathos, he continued at intervals to announce that he had “dreamt of Mummie.”