"If you don't mind our looking on," added Mavis.
But alack! shortly after lunch a most untoward thing happened. Dr. Tremayne had brought the car round from the yard into the road opposite the front door of the farm, preparatory to paying his usual weekly visit to the Sanatorium. He was pottering about inspecting various valves and nuts, in the manner of motorists, and Mavis and Merle, who had constituted themselves assistant chauffeurs, were armed with dusters and were trying to clean the splashboards, which had been much spattered with mud on the journey from Durracombe that morning. Uncle David prided himself upon a spick-and-span car, and liked to turn up at the Sanatorium with the little Deemster looking its best. Both girls were working away energetically, when round the corner from the village there suddenly appeared the whole of the Glyn Williams family, heading straight up the road towards Grimbal's Farm. Merle spied them first. She was on the side of the car nearest the house, and, with a presence of mind that amounted almost to instinct, she bolted inside the door like a rabbit into its burrow. Mavis, whose back was towards the village, was quite unaware that anyone was near till she heard Dr. Tremayne's greeting, and, turning round, found herself face to face with Gwen, Babbie, their mother, their brother, and the fox terrier. If she could, with any decency, have fled after Merle she would have done so, but there was no possibility of escape. She was already in their midst, and Uncle David—dear, tiresome man—was saying: "You know my niece?"
Mrs. Glyn Williams, a portly, rosy-faced lady, with a kind but rather patronizing manner, held out a white-gloved hand.
"Of course! You go to school at The Moorings, don't you? How nice for you to motor over to Chagmouth with your uncle on Saturdays. Are you going with him to the Sanatorium? What is it, Babbie, dear?" (for her younger daughter was whispering eagerly in her ear) "Oh yes, my precious! Doctor, won't you leave your niece on your way, and we'll show her round The Warren and keep her for tea? You can pick her up as you drive back."
There are some invitations which it is utterly impossible to refuse. Mrs. Glyn Williams had, to use a sporting term, "caught her bird sitting". Mavis glanced at Uncle David with mute appeal in her blue eyes, but he quite mistook her dismay, and instantly accepted on her behalf.
"We're going straight home now, through the woods, so come as soon as you can," urged Babbie, following the family as they turned up the road.
Could anything have been more utterly and entirely aggravating?
"Oh, Uncle David! How could you?" exclaimed Mavis reproachfully. "I'm not dressed to go to tea at The Warren. I only came in my school skirt and jersey. We meant to scramble about the farm this afternoon."
Dr. Tremayne focused his eyeglasses on his niece's attire. Such an aspect of the visit had never occurred to his innocent masculine mind.
"Bless my life! You look very nice, both of you," he decided.