“Oh father! I think there’s a good deal in a name. But never mind,” I continued, for I didn’t want him to go off into one of those long dissertations which he was so fond of, quite forgetting the person he was talking to. So I added hastily, “Miss Grace Donnithorne called. She said she was a friend of yours. Do you know her?”
“Miss—Grace—Donnithorne?” said father, speaking very slowly and pausing between each word. “Miss—Grace—Donnithorne?”
“Why, yes, father,” I said, and I went close to him now. “She was, oh, so funny—such a fat, jolly sort of person! Only she didn’t like this house one bit.”
“Eh? Eh?” said my father.
He sank into a chair near the fire.
“That is the very chair she sat in.”
My father looked round at it.
“The shabbiest chair in the whole house,” he said.
“But the most comfy, father.”
“Well, all right; tell me about her.”