Caroline caught his eye, and signed to him. He strode down the room to her.
“Eustace,” she said, “I wish you would not spend your money on the boy. You have no right to stint yourself—but—my dear fellow, you touch my heart—and—I cannot scold you.”
He stroked her shoulder:
“Tut, tut! nonsense!” said he, “we must not grow sentimental before we are forty——” He was interrupted by the click of the door, and, looking round, found Victoria May Alice at his elbow. She said to Caroline:
“My heye, mum, we is a-makin’ of a night of it!”
Lovegood laughed and strode back to his seat on Noll’s bed.
Caroline turned impatiently to the girl:
“Yes, yes, Victoria—what is it?”
Victoria May Alice sniffed:
“It ain’t it, mum—it’s them,” she said—“two of them comic gentlemen,” she tittered, and pulled herself up behind a grimy hand—“as is always a-hangin’ about with the party from the the-ayter.” She jerked a thumb at Lovegood. “They’re on the ’all doorstep and says is Master Noll at ’ome to partic’lar friends—and I says I’ll go and see; but if they was a-comin’ into this blessed house they’ve got to put out them dirty pipes. It’s not nice of them a-callin’ on the gentry a-smokin’ that muck. I don’t like it. These here London people has no manners. They wouldn’t do it if they was callin’ on a duchess or a bandy-legged bishop, or people as keep a butler. But—they are so ridic’lous! Specially that—te-hee!—fluffy gentleman. Blime me—if I don’t go on to the the-ayter myself when I’m grown up. I calls that Life——”