CHAPTER XLVI
The Sefton Arms
Old Mat never stopped in Liverpool for the big race.
That was partly because everybody else did, and partly because he always preferred The Sefton Arms upon the course. When his little daughter first took to accompanying her dad to the National she used to stay the night with a Methodist cousin of her mother's and join her father on the course next morning.
This time she refused point-blank to favour Cousin Agatha, and further refused to argue the matter. She was going with her father to The Sefton Arms. Mrs. Woodburn was genuinely distressed, so much so indeed that Silver heard her hold forth for the first time in his knowledge of her on the modern mother's favourite theme—the daughter of to-day.
Old Mat gave her little sympathy.
"She's said she's goin', so goin' she is," he grunted matter-of-factly. "No argifyin's no good when she's said that. You might know that by now, Mar."
He added, to assuage his wife, that Mr. Silver was going to stop with them at The Sefton Arms.
"He's better than some," said the old lady almost vengefully.
"Now then, Mar-r-r!" cried the old man, "You're gettin' a reg'lar old woman, you are."
When his wife had left the room in dudgeon: