“Nonsense, dear! Don’t try and alarm poor Nancy about the new relation she has to meet.”
“But—fancy! Meeting Uncle Albert for the first time! Golly!”
“Theo-dora!”
“I know. I did promise to chuck saying ‘Golly,’ but really it’s the only word that seems at all like Uncle Albert,” declared the child. “Uncle Albert’s a terror! Talk about me-ee! Yes, talk about me saying everything that comes into my head! Why, it’s from him that I inherit that! Only, I’m not in it with him!”
“It would be a good thing if you were, Theo,” reproachfully from Mrs. Waters. “I am sure your uncle has a heart of gold.”
“Always means there’s something else the matter with a person”—thus the irrepressible Theo. “People with ‘hearts of gold’ are either fearfully rude like old Miss Crabbe, and never say ‘Thank you,’ or they don’t care a rap what they do say, like Uncle Albert. If he doesn’t happen to approve of Billy’s fiancée, he’ll think nothing of telling Billy to break off——”
“Break off yourself, young woman. You talk a good deal too much,” put in her brother, as he rose, big and well-groomed, from the breakfast-table. “And keep Cariad, will you? He knows he never follows anyone but his mistress, but I’ve had to send the station-master’s boy back with him three times this week. Good-bye, all.”
“Good-bye,” said I sweetly. “Give my love to the Near Oriental, especially to the typists’ room, will you? How stuffy it will be getting there now! How thankful I am for anything that keeps me out of it on a morning like this! Still, I suppose one ought not to abuse the place where we first met.”
This with a glance at him, expressly for Blanche’s benefit, from under my eyelashes. For I am acquiring a taste for positively “baiting” my employer. I’m not going to be the one made to feel all the awkwardness of the situation. Not I!
Let him redden with embarrassment before the guileless remarks or questions that I aim at him before his mother and sisters. Serve him right! As for my employer’s feelings towards me, I have seen them ripening from obliviousness of my presence, through indifference and dislike, into positive hatred!