"Of course I should quite reform him in the end."
"You'd have your work cut out, Miss Brabazon."
"I ought to begin with you, you know!" said Miss Julia, shaking a facetious finger in Uvo's face. "I'm afraid you're rather an irreverent young man, and I don't know what the Vicar would say if he heard us." She threw another deliciously guilty glance towards the house. "But if you really mean what you say, and you're sure Mrs. Delavoye and your sister won't mind either——"
"Mind!" he interrupted. "Forgive me, Miss Brabazon, but how could they be sensitive about the last head but five of a branch of the family which doesn't even recognise our existence?"
"Very well, then! I'll take you at your word, and the—the blood and thunder," whispered Miss Julia, as though they were bad words, "be on your own head, Mr. Delavoye!"
Thereafter, in a quivering silence, Uvo took me home with him, and straight up into his own room, where he first shut door and window without a word. Never since have I heard man laugh quite so loud and long as he did then.
"But you don't see the point!" he arrogated through his tears, because I made rather less noise.
"What is it, then?"
"I told you I'd opened up a new sink to-day?"
"You said something of the sort."