"That's an error on your part, Percy," said Dicky smoothly. "Dad's only a commoner. But we'll work it out afterwards. This is my little sister Sylvia."
Mr. Welwyn greeted the statuesque Miss Mainwaring as he had greeted her parents, throwing in an ingratiating ogle which plainly intimated that he intended to make an impression in this quarter.
"Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss," he said. "We shall be calling each other Perce and Sylvie in no time, I can see. And now," he continued, turning his back upon the quivering figure of his future playmate, "I should like to address a few observations to the happy couple. You're a nice pair of turtle-doves to come and play gooseberry to, I don't suppose! Here I give up a whole Saturday afternoon to come and chaperon our Tilly and her young gentleman down to his ancestral home; and the first thing I know is the pair of them give me the slip at Waterloo! Chronic, I call it!"
"What else did you expect, Mr. Welwyn?" interposed Connie, coming characteristically to the rescue, the majority of the Mainwaring family being in no condition to cope with Percy. "Have n't you ever been engaged yourself?"
Her unsolicited intrusion into the conversation was plainly a shock to Percy's sense of decorum. He coughed reprovingly behind his hand, and turning to Dicky, remarked:--
"Introdooce me!"
Dicky, humble and apologetic, complied. Mr. Welwyn went through his usual performance, and continued:--
"Engaged, Mrs. Carmyle? Not me! Not that I might n't have bin, mark you, if I had n't been born careful. Be born careful, and you need n't be born lucky. The Proverbs of Perce--Number one!" he added, in a humorous aside. "Well, to resume. Luckily I had the old push-bike with me, and I managed to find my way down here in a matter of an hour and a half or so. And then what happens? Just as I am doing a final spin up your kerridge-drive, your ladyship--bing! bang! and I get bowled over in the dark by a charging rhinoceros!"
Mr. Welwyn concluded this dramatic narrative with a few appropriate gestures, and paused to note its effect upon his auditors.
"That was Maximilian, I fancy," explained Dicky cheerfully. "The little fellow must have got loose. Did you notice which way he was going?"