“Well!” For a moment words failed her; then she began, her hands spread out as though she was addressing a Suffragette meeting in Trafalgar Square. (She knew, happy woman, nothing of Suffragettes.) “Of all the things, and it's you, Master Jeremy, that 'as done it, as anyone might have guessed by the way you've been be'aving this last fortnight, and what's come over you is more nor I nor anyone else can tell, which I was saying only yesterday to your mother that it's more than one body and pair of hands is up to the managing of now you've got so wild and wicked; and wherever from did you get the dirty animal dropping water all over the nursery carpet and smelling awful, I'll be bound, which anyone can see that's got eyes, and you'd know what your father will do to you when he knows of it, and so he shall, as sure as my name is Lizzie Preston.... Go on out, you ugly, dirty animal-ough, you 'orrible creature you. I'll—”
But her advance was stopped. Jeremy stopped it. Standing in front of the dog, his short thick legs spread defiantly apart, his fists clenched, he almost shouted:
“You shan't touch him.... No, you shan't. I don't care. He shan't go out again and die. You're a cruel, wicked woman.”
The Jampot gasped. Never, no, never in all her long nursing experience had she been so defied, so insulted.
Her teeth clicked as always when her temper was roused, the reason being that thirty years ago the arts and accomplishments of dentistry had not reached so fine a perfection as to-day can show.
She had, moreover, bought a cheap set. Her teeth clicked. She began: “The moment your mother comes I give her notice. To think that all these years I've slaved and slaved only to be told such things by a boy as—”
Then a very dramatic thing occurred. The door opened, just as it might in the third act of a play by M. Sardou, and revealed the smiling faces of Mrs. Cole, Miss Amy Trefusis and the Rev. William Jellybrand, Senior Curate of St. James's, Orange Street.
Mr. Jellybrand had arrived, as he very often did, to tea. He had expressed a desire, as he very often did, to see the “dear children.” Mrs. Cole, liking to show her children to visitors, even to such regular and ordinary ones as Mr. Jellybrand, at once was eager to gratify his desire.
“We'll catch them just before their tea,” she said happily.
There is an unfortunate tendency on the part of our Press and stage to caricature our curates; this tendency I would willingly avoid. It should be easy enough to do, as I am writing about Polchester, a town that simply abounds—and also abounded thirty years ago—in curates of the most splendid and manly type. But, unfortunately, Mr. Jellybrand was not one of these. I, myself, remember him very well, and can see him now flinging his thin, black, and—as it seemed to me then—gigantic figure up Orange Street, his coat flapping behind him, his enormous boots flapping in front of him, and his huge hands flapping on each side of him like a huge gesticulating crow.