"Yes," replied Mrs. Banks with deliberation, "I 'ave 'eard of you. You and our Tilly are walking out."
Dicky assented with a happy laugh, and dropped into the only chair in Grandma's vicinity. Tilly breathed again: Lady Adela's further advance was checked. The party settled down once more, and talk broke out afresh.
Grandma Banks, whose conversational flights were not as a rule encouraged by her relatives, availed herself of her present emancipation to embark upon a brief homily to Dicky.
"I tells you this, young man," she said in a hectoring voice, "you've got a treasure in our Tilly. Don't you forget it."
"I made that discovery for myself a long time ago," said Dicky. He smiled up at his treasure, who was sitting upon the arm of his chair.
The treasure's grandmother, having in the mean time been supplied with refreshment by Amelia, took a piece of bread-and-butter and rolled it up into a convenient cylinder.
"Yes," she continued, dipping the end of the cylinder into her tea, "she takes after her mother, does Tilly. She may get some of her looks from her father's side, but when it comes to character, she's a Banks." Her aged voice rose higher. "Always been respectable, 'as the Bankses," she announced shrilly. "Very different from--"
At this point not less than three persons enquired of Lady Adela if she would not take another cup of tea; and in the hospitable mêlée which ensued Grandma's further utterances were obscured.
Percy was holding Lady Adela's cup, and Tilly was re-filling it, when the door opened and Mr. Stillbottle made his second entrance. As before, he came to a halt immediately on appearing, and coughed in a distressing fashion without making any attempt to deliver his lines.
"There is that quaint old retainer of yours again, Tilly," said Sylvia.