"I hope I have not interrupted you, Miss Cheffington?" said he, clearing his throat and settling his chin in his shirt-collar. "You were singing."
"Oh no; you haven't interrupted me at all. And, even if you had, it wouldn't matter. My singing is not worth much."
"Pardon me if I decline to believe that. From some sounds which reached me through the door, I am sure you sing charmingly."
May laughed. "Ah," said she, "the other side of the door is the most favourable position for hearing me. I really don't know how to sing. Ask granny."
"No; May doesn't know how to sing," said Mrs. Dobbs quietly, but very decisively. (For she had caught an expression on Mr. Theodore Bransby's pale, smooth face, which seemed to wonder superciliously what on earth she could know about it.) Whereupon his pale, smooth eyebrows raised themselves a hair's breadth more, but he said nothing.
"My grandmother is a great judge of singing, you must know," went on May innocently. "She has heard all the best singers at the Oldchester Musical Festivals for years and years past, and she used to sing herself in the choruses of the oratorios."
"Oh, I see!" said Theodore, with a little contemptuous air of enlightenment.
Jo Weatherhead looked across at him uneasily. He had a half-formed suspicion that this young spark with the smooth, rather closely-cropped blonde head, severe shirt-collar, faultlessly-fitting coat, and slightly pedantic utterance, showed a tendency to treat Mrs. Dobbs with impertinence. But he checked the suspicion, for, he argued with himself, young Bransby had had the training of a gentleman. And what gentleman would be impertinent to a worthy and respected woman, and in her own house, too? He thought, as he looked at him, that Theodore bore very little resemblance to his father, Martin Bransby, who was altogether of a different and more massive type.
"You don't favour your father much, sir," said Jo blandly.
The young man turned his pale blue eyes upon him with a look studiously devoid of all expression. "I had the honour of knowing your worthy father well, some five-and-twenty—or it may be thirty—years ago."