"Goodness, no!" said Miss Spennymoor, a trifle thickly. She removed several pins from her mouth. "You'll excuse me, but naturally I know who you are alluding to. I knew his mother very well, as I told you, Mrs. Haddington, only the other day. Oh, very well I knew poor Maudie Stratton! If ever there was a One - ! Quite set on calling her baby Lancelot, she was! She'd read a poem about some Lancelot or other, which that Hilary of hers gave her, and it quite took her fancy, though why it should of is more than I can tell you, because all the fellow could find to say when he saw the girl in the poem, all stiff and stark in a boat, was that she'd got a lovely face. Well, that's all very well, and, of course I daresay he looked ever so nice himself, in a helmet and all, and riding on a horse - because a horse does give a man tone, doesn't it? I always think so if ever I get the time to go into Hyde Park, which I do sometimes. Still, looks aren't everything, and I call it highly unnatural for anyone to go barmy about a fellow that went round singing Tirra-lirra, which is all this Lancelot did, by what I could made out. Laughable, I call it! But there it was! Nothing would do for Maudie but she must call her baby Lancelot! Never doubted it would be a boy, which I said to her was downright tempting providence, and so it was, because what must she do but go and have split twins! Laugh! I thought I should have died! If you'd turn round, Miss Cynthia, I could see if it's hanging straight!"
Mrs. Haddington, who had listened in stony silence to these recollections, caught her eye at this point, and gave her what the little dressmaker afterwards described as A Look. Miss Spennymoor, covered in confusion, coughed, said hastily: "But I mustn't run on, must I?" and, in her agitation, stuck a pin into Cynthia's tender flesh. By the time that sensitive damsel had been soothed into sullen quiescence, all thought of Lord Guisborough and his romantically-minded parent had been banished from Miss Spennymoor's mind, and she continued her task in chastened silence.
Miss Spennymoor had scarcely withdrawn to the seclusion of the sewing-room on the second floor when Beulah came into the boudoir, to lay before her employer the sum total of the weekly bills. Mrs. Haddington's eyes narrowed; she said: "I'll check it against the books."
Beulah flushed. "Certainly! I have them here!"
"Trot along, darling!" Mrs. Haddington told her daughter, in quite another voice. "I shouldn't racket about today, if I were you. Why don't you ring up Betty, and see if she'd like to go for a walk in the Park with you, and come back here to luncheon? Wouldn't that be rather nice?"
"No, hellish!" responded Cynthia frankly. "I'm going to lie down! I feel bloody!"
With these elegant words, she walked out of the room neglecting to shut the door behind her.
Mrs. Haddington seated herself at her desk, and held out her hand for the weekly accounts. In silence, Beulah laid a pile of books and bills before her, together with her own epitome.
"Your total appears to be correct," Mrs. Haddington said, after a pause.
"No, is it really?" retorted Beulah. "I quite thought I was getting away with a halfpenny!"