"Yes, Dearest George said that he was quite tired of carving," said Mrs. Freyne, "and Naylour is splendid at it. George had just upset some gravy on his lap the evening I asked him, and I think that helped him to decide. Crabbit will snuffle just when Dearest George is getting to the jointy part of the ducks, and it's so upsetting; very like an earthquake or a serious illness under the table."
"It was I who took him," said Gheena briefly. "He is a dear."
"Then I sent away the cook; she was quite old, too," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane, forgetting Naylour gracefully, "and the present one only needs a scullery maid, and I've put down one housemaid; and told the gardener he must do without old Magee, he only pottered lately. I have thoroughly faced futurity," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane; "even my cakes are only caraway seeds now."
"If they didn't get stuck in one's teeth," said Darby absently, "they make you think of Kümmel, and that's pleasant. Crabbit, you've had three pieces of sultana cake."
Crabbit laid a witchingly innocent head on Darby's knee, his big liquid eyes looking up sweetly.
"And I got rid of two of Eliza's dogs," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane pleasantly—"those two useless terrier brutes, with a touch of spaniel in them, Gheena."
"Eliza's dogs, what she loved!" Gheena was on her feet, her eyes flaming. "The dogs! You—you——"
"I told the men to do it," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane placidly, "in the lake—quite humanely."
What Gheena might have said was checked by a whisper from the old butler.
"They are both below at me house," he breathed over the tea-cups. "Little Miss Lizzie 'd break the heart in her, the craythur, over them."