When I came down to dinner I found the new arrival planted on his short, thick legs in front of the fireplace, still shouting at Mrs. Knox, who, notwithstanding the sinister presence of the two shawls of ill-omen, was listening with a propitious countenance. She looked very tired, and I committed the gaucherie of saying I was sorry to hear she had not been well.
"Oh, that was nothing!" said Mrs. Knox, with a wave of her tiny, sunburnt, and bediamonded hand. "I've shaken that off, 'like dewdrops from the lion's mane!' This is Mr. Tebbutts, from—er—England, Major Yeates."
Mr. Tebbutts, after a bewildered stare, presumably in search of the lion, proclaimed his gratification at meeting me, in a voice that might have been heard in the stable yard.
At dinner the position developed apace. The visitor was, it appeared, the representative of a patriarchal family, comprising samples of all the relationships mentioned in the table of affinities, and fortissimo, and at vast length, he laid down their personal histories and their various requirements. It was pretty to see how old Mrs. Knox, ill as she looked, and suffering as she undoubtedly was, mastered the bowling.
Did the Tebbutts ladies exact bathing for their young? The lake supplied it.
("It's all mud and swallow-holes!" said Flurry in an audible aside.)
Did the brothers demand trout fishing? the schoolboys rabbit shooting? the young ladies lawn tennis and society?—all were theirs, especially the latter. "My grandson and his wife will be within easy reach in their own house, Tory Lodge!"
The remark about the swallow-holes had not been lost upon the Lady of the Lake.
Mrs. Knox had her glass of port at dessert, an act equivalent to snapping her rheumatic fingers in our faces, and withdrew, stiff but erect, and still on the best of terms with her prospective tenant. As I held the door open for her, she said to me:
"''Twas whispered in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell.'"