Lydia had not been awarded the first prize, as she inwardly felt would have been in accordance with the dramatic fitness of things, but she had thoroughly amused Grandpapa by reading the sketch to him aloud, and she had taught herself a valuable lesson.
Experience, she had decided sweepingly, was the only royal road to literature. She would write no more until experience was hers.
Experience, however, to Lydia’s way of thinking, was not to be gained by remaining at Regency Terrace for ever.
When the last of her school days was approaching rapidly, she decided that the time had come to speak.
“Grandpapa, I should like to ask your advice.”
“Light the gas, my dear. Your aunt is very late out this afternoon,” was Grandpapa’s only reply.
When Grandpapa simulated deafness, it always meant that he was displeased.
Lydia obediently struck a match, and the gas, through its crinkly pink globe, threw a sudden spurt of light all over the familiar dining-room.
Grandpapa leant stiffly back in his arm-chair, a tiny, waxen-looking figure, with alert eyes that seemed oddly youthful and mischievous, seen above his knotted hands and shrunken limbs. He could see and hear whatever he pleased, but it was becoming more and more difficult for him to move, although he still staunchly refused to be helped from his chair.
“Lyddie, where’s Shamrock?”