Meanwhile she taught her needlework, and Lydia learnt to make her own blouses, and to knit woollen underwear for a necessitous class vaguely designated by Aunt Beryl as “the pore”.
Sewing was the only thing that Aunt Beryl taught Lydia in such a way as to make it interesting. She had no lessons after dinner, which was in the middle of the day. Sometimes in the afternoon she walked slowly on the Esplanade with Aunt Beryl beside Grandpapa’s chair, but more often, as the weather grew colder, she and Aunt Beryl went out alone, and then they walked briskly into what Aunt Beryl called “the town”. The part where Regency Terrace stood was the “residential quarter”.
“The town” mainly consisted of King Street and one of those tributary streets where the shops were. Lydia rather liked the shopping expeditions with Aunt Beryl, and felt important when the grocer’s boy or the ironmonger’s young lady took an order, and said, “Yes, Miss Raymond. Good afternoon, Miss Raymond,” without asking for any address.
Sometimes when Aunt Beryl’s list was a long one, and the darkness of approaching winter fell early, she took Lydia in to have tea at a small establishment known to King Street as the “Dorothy Cayfe,” and the shopping was resumed afterwards, in the cheerful light of the prevalent gas. This happened seldom, however, as Aunt Beryl liked to be at home, in order to give Grandpapa his tea—which was not wonderful, since whenever she failed to do so her parent never omitted to make caustic allusion to the “long outing that she must have been enjoying in the good fresh air.”
When Aunt Beryl had duly been present at the rite of tea, however, it was an understood thing that she went out for a couple of hours afterwards, and left Lydia to entertain Grandpapa. “I am just going to step round to the Jacksons, dear, with my work. I’ll be back by six o’clock or so.” That was really the time that Lydia liked best.
She soon found out that with Grandpapa she might be her own shrewd, little cynical self. He only required outward decorum and an absence of any modern slang or noisiness, which accorded well with Lydia’s natural taste and early training.
She also speedily discovered that Grandpapa thought her clever and that so long as her opinions and judgments were her own, he was ready to listen to them with amusement and interest. Any affectation or insincerity he would pounce upon in a moment. “Don’t humbug,” he sometimes said sharply. “It’s the worst policy in the world. Humbug always ends in muddle.”
“Shamrock’s a humbug,” said the old man once, chuckling as he fondled the little white dog. “He’s a humbug and he’ll come to a bad end. When I’m dead, they’ll get rid of Shamrock. They think I’m taken in by his humbug, but I know he’s a bad dog.”
Lydia could not help thinking that “they” had some excuse in supposing Grandpapa to be blind and deaf to his protégé’s iniquities, but she put out her hand and patted the dog’s rough head.
“Would you look after Shamrock, Lyddie?”