"Cup of tea, Grannie?" said Amelia.
"What's that?" enquired Mrs. Josiah Banks--late of Bedfordshire (or Cambridgeshire).
"Will you have a cup of tea?" repeated the child in a louder voice.
"No," replied her aged relative; "I won't."
"Very well, then," said Amelia good-temperedly. "Now you two, not so much of it, if you please!"
This warning was addressed to her younger brother and sister, who, together with herself, had joined the Welwyn family at a date subsequent to that upon which we first made its acquaintance. Amelia was twelve years of age, The Caution five, and The Cure some twenty minutes younger. At present the latter young lady, in the course of a life-and-death struggle for the possession of the jettisoned piece of buttered toast, had become involved in an embrace with her brother, so involved that it seemed as if no one unfamiliar with the use of letter-locks could ever unravel them. However, the experienced Amelia succeeded; and having shaken the skirts of The Cure a little lower and pulled the knicker-bockers of The Caution a little higher, dumped both combatants upon the sofa and divided the now hopelessly mangled booty between them.
"And don't let me catch you at it again," she added magisterially. "Only Monday morning, and your pinnies no more use than nothing! Come in!"
At the sight of the figure which appeared in the doorway in response to this invitation The Caution and The Cure set up a combined howl of apprehension, only to be quelled by a dole of lump-sugar--hush-money in the most literal sense of the word--supplied by the resourceful Amelia.
"Come in, Mr. Mehta Ram! What can we do for you this morning?" she enquired maternally. "Never mind those two"--indicating the quaking infants on the sofa. "It's their consciences, that's all. You see, I always threaten to give them to you when they are naughty, and now they think that you have really come for them. It's all right," she added, turning reassuringly to the culprits. "Mr. Ram won't eat you this time."
Benevolent Mr. Mehta Ram beamed upon the chubby buccaneers through his gold spectacles.