Uncle Alf was silent a minute: he wanted to say something ill-tempered but could not think of anything.
“Well, I’m glad the boy’s done something to deserve you, my dear,” he said, “though that sounds as if I was getting soft-headed, too, and perhaps I am, joining like this in this chorus of praise, this—this domestic symphony. But I can stand you and Claude: what I can’t stand is Eddie and Maria. Lord! if they aren’t coming out here, when I thought I had escaped. She in her bath chair, and he pushing it. A man of his age, and as stout as that. He’ll be bursting himself one of these days, and then we shall have Maria making us all sick with telling us how beautifully he bore it, and nobody behaved so bravely over a burst as her Eddie.”
Dora giggled hopelessly.
“Oh! you are such a darling,” she said. “I don’t mind what you say.”
The bath chair had approached, and Lady Osborne put down her sunshade as they came into the strip of shadow where Dora and Uncle Alf sat. He edged away from her as far as the angle of the house and the flower beds would permit.
“Well, and if this isn’t pleasant,” she said. “Eddie, my dear, we’ll stop here a bit and have a rest, if we’re not interrupting, and indeed it’s near teatime, and I want my tea badly to-day, I do. But my appetite’s been so good since my operation——”
Alf broke in.
“Maria, if I hear any more about you and your operation, I leave the house,” he said.
“Well, and I’m sure that’s the last thing I want you to do,” said Lady Osborne genially, “for I’m enjoying this little family party such as never was. Why, all the time I was getting better in London I was looking forward to it, and dreamed about it too. There now, Alf, don’t be so tetchy, stopping your ears in that manner, as if you had the neuralgia and was sitting in a draught. I was only going to say I’d been looking forward to a week or two of quiet down here with you all, and pleased I was to know that you would join us, instead of setting on Richmond Hill with the motors and all buzzing round you and raising clouds of dust with germs uncountable. Mr. O., my dear, you’re all of a perspiration with pushing me, and thank you. Won’t you be wise to put a wrap on, same as your brother does, when he sits out of doors, especially with you in that heat?”
“No, my dear, I’m comfortable enough. I was only wondering whether Dora was wise to sit here in that thin dress. It’ll strike chill before sunset.”