“Yes, Robert?”
“William, the page-boy, was sent away yesterday for stealing the jam.”
“Go on with your sum,” answered the governess, who was seated at the other end of the table helping Doris, little Lord Gawdor’s sister, to make a map. “This is the third time you have interrupted me with frivolous remarks. How can you expect to make your sum come right if you do not fix your mind on your slate?”
“I will in a minit,” said his lordship; “but I want to tell you, he’d cribbed a pot of plum jam, and he heard some one coming, and he popped it in the copper in the back kitchen where the clothes were boiling. Gran’ma said she never heard of an act of such—what was it, Doris?”
“Turpentine, I think,” replied Doris, throwing back her golden hair from her forehead, relieved to escape for a moment from the monotony of map-making.
“‘Turpitude,’ I suppose you mean,” said Miss Kiligrew.
“Yes, that was it,” said Lord Gawdor. “What’s it mean?”
“Wickedness,” replied Miss Kiligrew. “Go on with your sum.”
“I will; but I want just to tell you, he went away yesterday, and gran’ma said to Mrs Kinsella the cook she didn’t know what she’d do for a page-boy, and cook said she’d try and get Patsy Rooney, the son of the keeper, to come. He’s that red-headed boy we saw carrying the rabbits in the park the other day. My eye!” he concluded with a burst of laughter, “won’t he look funny in buttons!”
“Go on with your sum,” said Miss Kiligrew severely, “and don’t use vulgar expressions before your sister. Who taught you to say that?”