"What did you do?"
"Well, sir, I peppered him and Keatinged him just as though he was a house-moth."
We both stared at her.
"Readin' a book made me think of it; it was about a duchess and a baby, and the baby kept sneezin'. 'This will do for him,' says I to myself. So I buys a quarter of a pound of pepper and a tin of Keating's moth powder, and I sprinkles his pillow and hairbrushes, and handkerchiefs and pyjamas, and shaving-brush and his clothes, and the sneezin' which took place after that was somethin' dreadful. His eyes and nose was runnin', and he says he had a dreadful attack of influenza. Don't you remember, mum?"
She looked at me, but I made no answer. He was, after all, my father, and I must not sympathise with Amelia in her depravity.
"Go on," said Dimbie encouragingly, helping himself to a large supply of strawberry jam.
"Well, he came and danced about my kitchen like a hathlete at the circus. Couldn't have believed pepper could have made anythink so active, and with his gout, sir. I couldn't get him out of the kitchen for hever so long."
"And what did you do?"
"Oh, I just fetched the pepper-pot and shook it at him, one shake and he fairly raced. And Jumbles began a-sneezin' too, and rushed off to the roof of the shed; there was legs flying in all directions."
Dimbie tilted back his chair and roared with laughter.