“You can’t think how pretty she is! I say, mother.”
“Yes, dear.”
“I say, can’t you have fur put round the edge of your shoes!”
“Fur round the edge of my shoes!” she repeated in a hollow voice.
He twisted his hands together self-consciously.
“Mrs. Pickering had an awful ripping violet sort of dress, and violet satin boots with fur round the edge. … I noticed them when we played ’Death in the Desert.’ I thought they were rather pretty.”
“Extremely bad style, I should think. At any rate, not the sort of thing that I should dream of wearing. Now get along.”
Clifford went down to the kitchen and worried the cook with descriptions of the gorgeous cakes he had seen at the Pickerings till she said that his ma had better accept her notice, and engage the Pickerings’ cook instead.
“Orders from you, Master Clifford, I will not take. And now you’ve got it straight. For grars in the afternoon is a thing I don’t hold with and never would hold with, and I’ve lived in the best families. There’s some nice sandwiches made of gentlemen’s relish made of Blootes’ paste, your ma’s always ’ad since I’ve been here; it’s done for her and the best families I’ve lived in. Fors grars is served at the end of dinner with apsia and jelly, or else in one of them things with crust on the top and truffles. But for tea I consider it quite out of place.”
She went on to say that if she couldn’t have her kitchen to herself without the young gentlemen of the house putting their oar in, she would leave that day month.