“Didn't I tell you yesterday that I was coming to see the kids tubbed?”
“I didn't think you meant it.”
Mr. Bob Chater laughed. “Well, now you see that I did. I've been looking forward to this all day.”
Plainly she was perturbed. She said: “Mr. Chater, I really would rather you did not, if you don't mind.”
“Well, but I do mind, d'you see? I mind very much indeed. It would be the bitterest disappointment.”
His playfulness sat ill upon him. This was a stout young man, black-eyed, dark-moustached, with a thick and heavy look about him.
She would not catch his mood. “I am sure when I ask you—”
“Well, you're jolly well wrong, you know,” he laughed; “'cause I ain't going.”
Mary flushed slightly; moved to the hearthrug where sat David and Angela, her small charges, watching, from their toys, the scene.
It occurred to Mr. Bob Chater that she was annoyed.