“How do you do? How kind of you to come and see us,” said Caleb. “So very kind. I can’t say how much we appreciate it. You’ll stay and have tea with us, won’t you?”
“Thank you very much,” said Nancy, wondering how on earth she was going to suggest what she had come all the way from London to suggest.
“You’ll excuse our lack of ceremony? We’re such simple people. I suppose you drove up from the station? And this is poor Bram’s little girl, I suppose?”
Caleb’s beaming expression had changed in a flash to one of extreme wide-eyed mournfulness.
“Will you give your Uncle Caleb a kiss, my dear?” he asked in smugly sentimental accents.
“No, fank you,” Letizia replied, evidently supposing that she was behaving extra well in refusing so politely.
Nancy could not bring herself to reprove her daughter’s disinclination. She felt that, if she had been a little girl of Letizia’s age, she should not have cared to kiss this very old young man.
Caleb turned on his smile to dispose of the rebuff.
“Let me see, how old is she?”
“Five next July.”