“Hulloo!” cried the heads; and an arm, presumably that of the boy, waved something by way of a flag, something that seemed either a huge and dirty pocket-handkerchief or an old dish-cloth.
“Hulloo!” replied Mr Fanshawe, waving his pipe.
Next moment a small potato, which Lord Gawdor had been playing desert islands[1] with, caught Mr Fanshawe on the shoulder, and, rebounding, hit the car driver on the nose.
“Bad cess to them childer!” said the driver. “They’re the divil and all; never aisy but whin they’re aslape, I’ve heard tell.”
“They’re all there, aren’t they?” said Mr Fanshawe, as the car drew up at the steps. “Might have been worse if they’d fired turnips on us. Cousin Robert’s kids, I suppose.”
He jumped off the car and went up the steps, where old James, the butler, was waiting to receive him.
A chalk ring on the nursery floor makes the island.
Lady Seagrave was a great friend of General Grampound’s, but she had not seen Dicky Fanshawe since he was a boy at school.
“Her ladyship is waiting to receive you in the blue boudoir, sir,” said old James; “but O Mr Fanshawe”—he looked with horror at the pipe which Dicky had laid on the hall table—“O Mr Fanshawe, her ladyship can’t a-bear pipes!”
“Never mind,” replied Dicky, lightly, hanging up his hat; “she can smoke cigars, if she prefers them.”
“I haven’t seen you for twelve years, Mr Fanshawe,” said the old man. “Last time I seen you was when you were a boy from school; how you have grown, to be sure! But it ain’t a question of cigars—her ladyship has a horror of all tobacco; and when gentlemen are here as are addicted to smokin’ they has to smoke in the scrubbery.”
“Under the trees at the side o’ the house, sir.”
“Oh, the shrubbery you mean. All right—yes, I remember you well, James. Twelve years ago—why, it seems a thousand years ago since I paid that visit to Wapshot Park with the General—you were butler then too. Do you remember the day I tumbled out of the apple tree into the horse pond, and came home without any shoes and all covered with mud?”
“That I do, sir,” said James, grinning at the recollection; “and the face the General pulled when he saw you. This way, sir.”
Lady Seagrave was seated by the fire in the boudoir just as we saw her on the day Patsy Rooney made her acquaintance.