‘Oh, nothing,’ said Charles in a hurry; ‘at least, I mean, we accepted his apologies, so we can’t sneak.’
‘I wouldn’t call it sneaking to tell you,’ said Caroline confidingly, ‘because, of course, you’d promise on your honour not to tell Lord Andore. We don’t want to get other people’s servants into trouble when we’ve accepted their apologies. But the footman was rather——’
At this moment the footman himself appeared at the top of the steps with an elderly whiskered man in black, whom the children rightly judged to be the butler. The two had come hastily out of the door, but when they saw the children and their companion, the footman stopped as if, as Charles said later, he had been turned to stone, and only the butler advanced when the youth in the Harris tweed said rather shortly, ‘Come here, Checkles!’ Checkles came, quickly enough, and when he was quite close he astonished the three C.’s much more than he will astonish you, by saying, ‘Yes, m’lord!’
‘Tea on the terrace at once,’ said the Harris-tweeded one, ‘and tell them not to be all day about it.’
Checkles went, and the footman too. Charlotte always believed that the last glance he cast at her was not one of defiance but of petition.
‘So you’re him,’ Charles was saying. ‘How jolly!’
But to Caroline it seemed that there was no time to waste in personalities, however flattering. Lord Andore’s tea was imminent. He was most likely in a hurry for his tea; it was past most people’s tea-time already. So she suddenly held out the flowers, and said, ‘Here’s a bouquet. We made it for you. Will you please take it.’
‘That’s awfully good of you, you know,’ said Lord Andore; ‘thanks no end!’ He took the bouquet and smelt it, plunged his nose into the midst of the columbine, roses, cornflowers, lemon verbena, wistaria, gladiolus and straw.
‘It’s not a very nice one, I’m afraid,’ said Caroline; ‘but you can’t choose the nicest flowers when you have to look them out in two books at once. It means Welcome, fair stranger; An unexpected meeting; We are anxious and trembling; Confidence—no, we left that out, because we hadn’t any; and Agreement, because we hope you will.’
‘How awfully interesting. It was kind of you,’ said Lord Andore, and before he could say any more Charlotte hastened to say: