“You don’t know him, I told you—it’s a Mr. Flippance!”
A beautiful peace had come over the convulsed face. “Flippance! Ain’t that the gent what’s come to live in Frog Farm? That’s a fust-class toff, no mistake. Uncle Lilliwhyte should be tellin’ me, when he come with the watercress on Tuesday, as Mr. Flippance pays a pound a week for hisself alone!”
That was the point at which her grandfather had kissed her with effusion, crying: “Ye’ll be in clover, dearie!” while she, licking her chaps at the thought of the morrow’s banquet, had playfully answered that there would certainly be “a mort to eat.” The prospect set him clucking gleefully.
“Spite o’ that rapscallion!” he had chuckled, enlarging thereupon to her on the way the Lord protects His righteous subjects, and enlivening his discourse with adjurations to “the pirate thief” to take to his hands and knees. Had followed reproaches for hiding the news from him, reproaches to Mr. Flippance for not calling on him, not even inviting him to the wedding: soothing explanations from her that Mr. Flippance knew he was too poorly to go that far; assurances she would be back as early as possible.
She ought to have understood his delusion or self-delusion, she thought, when he had clung to her in a sudden panic.
“Then ye will come back—ye ain’t leavin’ me to starve! Ye won’t let that jackanips starve me out?”
And when she had reassured him, and caressed him, even promised to bring him something tasty from the wedding breakfast, he had gripped her harder than ever—she could still feel his bony fingers on her wrist—but of course they actually were on her wrists as she sat there now against her pillow—“ye’ll live here with me—same as afore!”
“Why ever shouldn’t I?” she had answered in her innocence. “We’ll always live with you—Methusalem, Nip, all of us.” What unlucky impulse of affection or reassurance had made her stoop down to kiss the dog in his basket—all her being burnt with shame at the remembrance of her grandfather’s reply, though at the time it had touched her to tears.
“God bless ye, Jinny. Oi know this ain’t a proper bedroom for you, but Oi’ll sleep here if you like, and do you and he move up to mine.”
She had put by the offer gently. “Nonsense, Gran’fer. You can’t shift at your age—or Nip either.”