“Philip?”
“Yes, mother.”
“You quite understand that you have got to be a very good little boy?”
“Oh, yes, mother, I understand.”
“It’s a big, grand place—it’s what is described as an ancient place, and dates back hundreds and hundreds of years, and you, you—why, what is the matter, Philip?”
“Is it antediluvian?” asked Philip, jumping up from his seat opposite his mother in the railway carriage. “Oh, I do hope and trust it’s antediluvian!”
“How you do puzzle me with your queer words, Philip. Antediluvian!—that means before the Flood. Oh, no, Avonsyde wasn’t in existence before the Flood; but still it is very old, and the ladies who live there are extremely grand people. You haven’t been accustomed to living in a great ancient house, and you haven’t been accustomed to the manner of such grand ancient ladies as the Misses Griselda and Katharine Lovel, and I do trust—I do hope you will behave properly.”
“Hullo! There’s a spider up in that window,” interrupted the boy. “I must try to catch him. There! he has run into his hole. Oh, mother, mother, look! there’s a windmill! See, it’s going round so fast! And, I say, isn’t that a jolly river? I want to fish and to shoot when I get to the grand place. I don’t care what else I do if only I have plenty of fishing and shooting.”
Philip Lovel’s mother knit her brows. She was a tall, fashionably dressed woman, with a pale face, a somewhat peevish expression, and a habit of drawing her eyebrows together until they nearly met.
“Philip, you must attend to me,” she said, drawing the little boy down to stand quietly by her side. “I have got you a whole trunkful of nice gentlemanly clothes, and I have spent a heap of money over you, and you must—yes, you must please the old ladies. Why, Phil, if this scheme fails we shall starve.”