Mrs. Puddephatt, standing with folded arms and a bleak, patient smile, awaited his good pleasure to answer.
“Hev you adone, sir?” she now demanded. “Don’t let me hinterrupt you before you’ve got it hall hout.”
“Thank you,” said Uncle Jenico, a little abashed. “I think there’s nothing more.”
“Ho!” said the lady, drawing in a sharp breath. “Then let me hexpress at once, sir, before more’s said, my hobligation for your supposing as I’m supposing.”
“I admit it was unpardonable,” answered my uncle, with a beaming but rather frightened smile. “I should have understood, of course, that you have warrant for your smugglers.”
“Not my smugglers, sir,” she said, “begging your pardon. Faults there may be in my pronounciation; but ’awking and spitting in his langwidge was never yet, so far as I know, laid to the charge of a Londoner.”
“My dear soul!” began Uncle Jenico. But she interrupted him—
“No, sir; nor to hend the names of his towns with a hoath, which it is not permitted to a lady’s lips to pollute themselves with huttering.”
“O, really, Mrs. Puddephatt, I don’t understand!” said my uncle in despair.
“I dare say not, sir,” went on the inexorable female. “But you must excuse me if I draw the line at Hamster and Rotter.”