Miss Tomlinson still here? [_To BEATIE._] Don't go, don't go. Glad to see Cis so fond of his music. Your sister Charlotte is behind her time, my darling.
You must stay and see my sister-in-law, Bullamy.
_I_ have never met her yet, we will share first impressions. In the interim, will Miss Tomlinson delight us with a little music?
[_Bustling up to the piano._] If this young lady is going to sing she might like one of my jujubes.
[_BEATIE sits at the piano with CIS and MR. BULLAMY on each side of her. MR. POSKET treads on a nut as he walks over to his wife._
Dear me--how come nuts into the drawing-room? [_To AGATHA._] Of what is my darling thinking so deeply? [_Treads on another nut._] Another! My pet, there are nuts on the drawing-room carpet!
No--about Miss Tomlinson--your little _protégée._
Very. But not old enough to exert any decided influence over the boy's musical future. Why not engage a master?
A boy of fourteen, not yet out of Czerny's exercises.
[_To herself._] If we were alone now, I might have the desperation to tell him all!
Besides, my darling, you know the interest I take in Miss Tomlinson; she is one of the brightest little spots on my hobby-horse. Like all our servants, like everybody in my employ, she has been brought to my notice through the unhappy medium of the Police Court over which it is my destiny to preside. Our servant, Wyke, a man with a beautiful nature, is the son of a person I committed for trial for marrying three wives. To this day, Wyke is ignorant as to which of those three wives he is the son of! Cook was once a notorious dipsomaniac, and has even now not entirely freed herself from early influences. Popham is the unclaimed charge of a convicted baby-farmer. Even our milkman came before me as a man who had refused to submit specimens to the analytic inspector. And this poor child, what is she?
The daughter of a superannuated General, who abstracted four silk umbrellas from the Army and Navy Stores--and on a fine day too!
[_To MR. POSKET, coughing and laughing and popping a jujube into his mouth._] My dear Posket, I really must congratulate you on that boy of yours--your stepson. A most wonderful lad. So confoundedly advanced too.
[_Confidentially._] While the piano was going on just now, he told me one of the most humorous stories I've ever heard. [_Laughing heartily and panting, then taking another jujube._] Ha, ha, bless me, I don't know when I have taken so many jujubes!