On Sunday afternoon, as five o’clock was striking from St. Martin’s Church, Mr. Philip drove up to Bedford Gardens and pulled the door bell of Number Ten.
A trim little parlor-maid led him up to a cozy little drawing-room.
Miss Caspar received him with unaffected cordiality.
“And this is my Granny, Mr. Shelmerdine,” said Cinderella proudly.
Grandmamma was a stately old dame in a turban, turned eighty-four—a really wonderful old lady. Her speech was lively and forcible; and her manner had the grace of one who had grown old with dignity. It had a half-humorous touch of grandeur also, as of one who has known the great world from the inside, and is not inclined to rate it above its value.
Grandmamma shook hands, and said she was glad to meet the son of his father.
“A good and honorable and upright man I’m sure, Mr. Shelmerdine, although his politics are all wrong to my mind. You see, we artists, even the oldest of us, live for ideas, and these unfortunate Vandeleurites—but we won’t talk politics, although it was I who bought Mr. Vandeleur his first bells and coral. At that time nobody except his mother and myself, and possibly his nurse foresaw that he was the future Prime Minister of England. Polly, my dear, the tea.”
“You boastful old Granny,” said Mary. “And I don’t think Mr. Shelmerdine is a bit impressed.”
“But I am—awfully,” said Mr. Shelmerdine gallantly, handing the Bohea.
And he came within an ace of dropping the cup on to the hearthrug, because Miss Mary chose at that fateful moment to twitch her adorable left eyelid so artfully that the young man had to whisk away his countenance to keep from laughing in the face of Grandmamma.