The girl’s bright spirits and unvarying tenderness to his father, for whom she was always buying Bath buns or finding snacks, made Tom desperately in love with her, but he had only received chaff as his amatory food in return. Tryphie meantime went on as a sort of upper servant, with the entrée of the drawing-room; and while Justine was the repository of much that was false in Lady Barmouth, she alone was admitted to the secrets of her aunt’s first and second sets of teeth, which she had to clean in her own room with the door locked, it being supposed that it was her ladyship’s diamond suite then undergoing a renovating brush, while poor Tryphie all the time was operating upon what looked like a ghastly grin without any softening smile given by overhanging lips.
“I tell you what it is, Tryphie,” said Tom one day, as he met her on the stairs—“but I say, what’s that?” and he pointed to a little case which she tried to conceal.
“Don’t ask impertinent questions, sir,” was the reply. “Now then, what is it?”
“Well, I was going to say—oh, I say, how pretty you look this morning.”
“You were not going to say anything of the kind, sir.”
“Well then, I was going to say if I am worried much more, I shall hook it.”
“Slang!” cried Tryphie.
“Well, I must slang somebody. I mustn’t swear. I’m half mad, Tryphie.”
“Poor fellow! you have been smoking yourself so.”
“Nonsense!” he said, “a fellow must do something to keep off the blues.”