"An' you reckon I got nothin' better to do than go gallivantin' with you, lookin' for islands in the Bristol Channel?"
"—W'en I said, on'y a minute back," she answered with composure, "that we were leavin' you in Stratford for a week."
"Ho!" he commented scornfully. "Leavin' me, are you? You leavin' me? . . . Well, if that ain't good, I declare!"
She looked at him as one disdaining argument.
"I'll tell you all about it termorrow. Let's 'ave in supper now; for we're 'ungry, Arthur Miles an' me, an' the Fat Lady'll be expectin' us. Between two an' three miles down the river there's a lock, near a place they call Weston—you know it, I reckon? Well, meet us there termorrow—say eight o'clock—an' we'll 'ave a talk."
"The child," said Mr. Mortimer, "has evidently something up her sleeve, and my advice is that we humour her."
Tilda eyed him.
"Yes, that's right," she assented with unmoved countenance. "'Ave in supper and 'umour me."
The supper consisted of two dishes—the one of tripe-and-onions, the other of fried ham. There were also potatoes and beer, and gin, Mr. Mortimer being a sufferer from some complaint which made this cordial, as Mrs. Mortimer assured them, "imperative." But to-night, "to celebrate the reunion," Mr. Mortimer chose to defy the advice of the many doctors—"specialists" Mrs. Mortimer called them—who had successively called his a unique case; and after a tough battle—his wife demurring on hygienic, Sam on financial, grounds—ordered in a bottle of port, at the same time startling the waitress with the demand that it must not be such as that—
"She set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers."