"He is reading 'The Spectator,' Mother," was the somewhat Delphic response.
"Then ring for tea, dear."
It was a bleak Saturday afternoon in late February. Darkness was closing in, and the great fire in the hall at The Towers flickered lovingly upon our leading weekly review, which, temporarily diverted from its original purpose in order to serve as a supplementary waistcoat for Mr. Mainwaring, rose and fell with gentle regularity in the warm glow.
Mr. Mainwaring's daughter rang a bell and switched on the electric light with remorseless severity; his wife came rustling down the broad oak staircase; and Mr. Mainwaring himself, realising that a further folding of the hands to sleep was out of the question, peeled off "The Spectator" and sat up.
"Abel," observed Lady Adela--her husband's baptismal name was a perpetual thorn in her ample flesh, but she made a point of employing it on all occasions, as a sort of reducing exercise to her family pride--"tea will be here in a moment."
Mr. Mainwaring rose to his feet. He was an apologetic little gentleman, verging on sixty, with a few wisps of grey hair brushed carefully across his bald head. At present these were hanging down upon the wrong side, giving their owner a mildly leonine appearance. A kindly, shy, impulsive man, Abel Mainwaring was invariably mute and ill at ease beneath the eye of his wife and daughter. Their patrician calm oppressed him; and his genial expansive nature only blossomed in the presence of his erratic but affectionate son.
"Tea?" he exclaimed with mild alacrity--"Who said tea?"
"Abel," announced Lady Adela in tones which definitely vetoed any further conversational openings originating in tea, "I think it only right to tell you that a visitor may arrive at any moment; and your present appearance, to put it mildly, is hardly that of the master of a large household."
"My dear, I fly!" said Mr. Mainwaring hurriedly, and disappeared. At the same moment there was a tinkle in the back premises.
"There goes the front-door bell," said Sylvia. "I never heard the carriage. Can it be Connie already?"