"What's this about kidneys and bacon?" demanded Mr. Crowberry, hurrying up with an eagerness which made him almost sprightly. "Where? When? How on earth have you managed it?"
Antonio abandoned the two voluptuaries to the tender mercies of young Crowberry; for Isabel was standing in the doorway. Her walk through the morning air had painted her cheeks a delicate rose-pink; but, as she stood among them with white ungloved hands showing against her blue dress of fine stuff, and with a large white feather curled round her blue hat, she seemed like the azulejos, all blue and white.
"So you have come to see the end?" she said.
"Who knows?" he retorted, smiling sadly. "Will the saw survive the acid? We shall see. But I crave leave to thank you. You have interceded with your illustrious father."
"I have," she said, "and my illustrious father simply ordered me off to bed, like a small child. You don't understand him. He has never noticed that I am grown up into quite an old young woman. He still calls Mrs. Baxter my governess. I believe he thinks she still gives me lessons in arithmetic and spelling. I did my best; but it was worse than nothing."
"If you had succeeded triumphantly," he answered, with one of his unconscious glances into the depths of her eyes, "I could not be more grateful than I am."
Young Crowberry came forward and presented his morning compliments. He added that Sir Percy had found a defect in the vertical traveler of his circular saw and that he wished to be unbothered by onlookers while he put it right. The young man went on to suggest that it might divert that Excellent Creature Mrs. Baxter from the contemplation of her wrongs if they showed her round the monastery.
Grumbling gruffly at his fate, Mr. Crowberry the elder joined the party. Mrs. Baxter composed her features to an iron immobility. She was evidently determined to approve of nothing.
"I confess, ma'am," said young Crowberry, "that the humble entertainment we have to offer is poorer in excitement than some others; for example, than the public hangings which are provided for the nobility and gentry of our own country at this same hour of eight o'clock."
Nobody laughed.