“Poor child! Get her a little wine and a biscuit first, George.”
Lydia sat complacently at the square dining-room table, whilst Uncle George slowly unlocked the lower half of the sideboard and brought out a decanter with a very little red liquid in it, and Aunt Beryl produced, also from a locked receptacle, a small glass barrel containing three or four Albert biscuits.
“You sit here quietly, dear. Aunt Evelyn and I will go up to Grandpapa first.”
The aunts left the room together, and Lydia and Uncle George remained solemnly facing one another across the dining-room table. Lydia was much too self-possessed a little girl ever to feel any necessity for making conversation, and as her uncle remained silent, she occupied herself in gazing round the dining-room, familiar though it was to her already. The table was still covered with rather worn red baize; Grandpapa’s arm-chair, in which Grandpapa should by rights have been sitting now, still stood in the bay window, flanked by the small, round table which supported the parrot’s cage. The cage was covered with an old piece of green stuff now, and Lydia was glad of it. She was not at all fond of the parrot. Over the mantelpiece hung “The Monarch of the Glen,” and over the writing-table, at which no one ever wrote, but where Aunt Beryl did a good deal of sewing, was “Derby Day.” Lydia had heard Aunt Evelyn say that the detail in that picture always struck her as being quite wonderful.
The sideboard was the largest piece of furniture in the room, and it occupied almost the whole of one end of it. Lydia had often been told the story of the sideboard’s arrival at Regency Terrace—the impossibility of getting it in at the front door—Uncle George’s humorous suggestion that the roof of the house should be taken off—and finally its lengthy and strenuous entrance through a window, assisted by a large crane. It was a matter of everlasting regret to Lydia that this sensational progress should have taken place some twenty years before her own arrival into the world. In front of the empty grate stood a faded worked screen, its spiral legs embedded in the fluffy black hearth-rug.
“Oh,” said Lydia, suddenly reminded, “where is Shamrock?”
“Out, I suppose,” said Uncle George simply. Shamrock was Grandpapa’s dog, and Uncle George had good reason to disclaim all responsibility for Shamrock’s in-comings and out-goings.
“A seaside town, or, in fact, any town, is no place for a dog, in my opinion,” said Uncle George.
“Of course they have more fun in the country,” glibly returned his niece, who had never spent more than three consecutive days in the country anywhere, nor owned a dog in her life. “They can run after chickens and lambs, I suppose,” she added innocently.
“They can indeed!” ejaculated Uncle George. “But why lambs, Lydia?”