“I play draughts quite nicely,” he said thoughtfully; and Harriet snorted and gave him her shoulder. Dandy looked at the carpet.
“Well, I can rake you in, can’t I, Miss Shaw? Two bob entrance, grub provided. Helwise, I’m bringing Miss Shaw to practise on your pole! Mine’s being painted for the tournament. If Lanty or the scrape-up-behind man will play, we can have a foursome.”
“Pleasure—of course—certainly!” Miss Lancaster responded, dragged from a demand for rummage. “Armer isn’t very safe, though. He will play a sort of Aunt Sally, and it hurts. And Lancelot is very worried, just now. Some of his silly tenant-people are leaving, and he’s quite put out about it. You’d think he actually cared when an old man began to fail, or his children turned out badly! I tell him they all look exactly alike to me, so I’m afraid I can t pretend to be very sympathetic.”
“You mean the Ninekyrkes business?” Harriet asked. “It’s all over the place, of course, about young Whinnerah and Michael’s daughter. The girl’s been over-educated, that’s what’s wrong. Thinks herself too good for her own class. They sent for Lanty, didn’t they, to try and patch things up?”
“Why, does he always lend a hand in the tenants’ love-affairs?” Hamer laughed. “That’s a big order, surely!”
“Oh, they use him as a family iron to smooth out the creases!” Helwise sighed. “I have no doubt he talked to the girl like a Methuselah. He has no joie de vivre. People with no joie de vivre are very depressing to live with. Oh, thank you, dear Mr. Shaw! That will be a guinea each for the Protesters and the Rummage, half a guinea for the Paper Roses—it was the Paper Roses, wasn’t it?—and, by the way, did I mention the Torn Tea-Cloths? Oh, you must really allow me to interest you in the Torn Tea-Cloths!”
She had the money in her hand when Lanty was suddenly announced, and Hamer, following his accusing eyes, grasped the situation instantly.
“I’ve just been getting Miss Lancaster’s opinion on your local charities,” he remarked, putting his big, kindly person between the two. “I’m a whale at charities—you just ask our Dandy Anne! They’re a sort of hobby of mine, and I’m glad to have a bit of advice from somebody who knows what’s worth helping. Mother, give Miss Lancaster another cup of tea!”
“Hamer doesn’t count life worth living if he hasn’t a hand in somebody’s pie,” his wife added, comfortably following on. “There was one whole year I declare he talked of nothing but overworked tram-horses! I’m glad to see you, Mr. Lancaster! You know Dandy there, I fancy? That’s Mr. Wigmore, an old friend of ours from our old home.”
Lanty found himself engineered to a chair beside the daughter of the house, while his aunt hurried clinking coins into her purse behind Hamer’s broad back.