"How do you do, Mr. Beaton?" she began. "How nice of you to come just in time for tea! Violet and Dick are having tea with me to-day for a treat, but they generally have it in the schoolroom, don't you know? Come, children, this is Mr. Beaton who is so kind as to come and teach Dick."
Violet, who inherited her mother's beauty, treated the new tutor to a supercilious little nod; but Dick, a plain and wholesome little boy, thrust a sticky and jam-besprinkled palm into Paul's outstretched hand.
"I say," said Dick, "I've been out shooting with father to-day."
"Have you?" replied Paul with polite interest. "I hope you have had good sport."
Dick shook his little red head. "We had bad luck," he said, "shocking bad luck; only four brace and a couple of hares all day. But father let me carry the birds home, and I got my clothes covered with blood," he added more cheerfully.
"As Dick has been out all day, and walked so far, I am letting him have an egg with his tea," said Lady Esdaile, "and he insists upon eating bread and jam with it. I wish he wouldn't! Do you think it will make him ill?"
"I cannot say. It is not a combination that would suit me, but other times other manners, you know, Lady Esdaile."
"What a fuss you make about a chap, mother!" exclaimed Dick with scorn. "I'm all right and feel as fit as a fiddle. But it is enough to make a fellow sick to hear you talking so much about whether things are good for us or not."
"Very well, darling. But promise me you will leave off eating jam with your egg the minute you begin to feel not quite well. And, oh! Mr. Sebright, I was forgetting all about you, and you have had such a long journey and must want your tea dreadfully! How stupid I am!"
"Not at all. The journey from Chayford is quite a short one really, only there are so many changes it makes it rather troublesome."