An hour later Mary was going through her lists of cards and addresses with the typewriter when she suddenly said:
“Oh, Miss Wilson, I’m writing a sort of story. And it’s to be told in a series of letters.”
“Oh yes.”
“Will you please take this down. This is the address: Percy Kellynch, Esq., 100 Sloane Street. It begins like this: ‘Dear Mr. Kellynch——’” …
CHAPTER X
MASTER CLIFFORD KELLYNCH
LADY KELLYNCH was in the room she usually chose for sitting in for any length of time, when her son, Clifford (twelve years old), was at home for the holidays.
A widow, handsome and excessively dignified, as I have mentioned, with her prim notions, she was essentially like the old-fashioned idea of an old maid. As her fine house was very perfectly and meticulously furnished, she treated the presence of Clifford as an outrage in any room but this particularly practical and saddle-bag old apartment, where there was still a corner with a little low chair in it, and boxes full of toys and other things, which were not only far outgrown by Clifford, but which were absolutely never seen nowadays at all, and would be considered far behindhand as amusements for a child of four.
This extra, additional child, born eighteen years after his brother, and just before the death of his father, was still looked upon by Lady Kellynch as a curious mixture of an unexpected blessing, an unnecessary nuisance, and a pleasant surprise. She was always delighted to see him when he first came home from school, but he was very soon allowed to go and stay with Bertha and Percy. Bertha adored him and delighted in him in reality; Lady Kellynch worshipped him in theory, but though she hardly knew it herself, his presence absolutely interfered with all her plans about nothing, spoilt her little arrangements for order, and jarred on the clockwork regularity of her life, especially in her moments of sentiment.