Mrs. Tregennis put the teapot down on the brown tile that served as a stand. “I simply couldn’t, Miss,” she stated emphatically; “it would choke me, that it would.”
“Do you think it would be safe to experiment on Tommy? Tommy, would you choke if you were to eat one of the oranges we bought this afternoon?”
In reply Tommy stretched out both hands for the fruit, and his teeth had met in the thick rind before Mammy could improve his manners.
“An’ what do you say, my son? I’d be ashamed!”
“Thank you,” said Tommy, removing a large piece of orange peel from between his teeth.
“I should say ‘Miss,’ ma lovely,” still corrected Mammy, but by this time a little fountain of sweet, yellow juice spurted upwards from the orange, and Tommy, sucking vigorously, walked away.
Later in the evening, as the ladies were going out once more Mrs. Radford opened her door and beckoned them into the room.
“It was kind of you to ask my babe to drive with you to-morrow,” she said, in her most mincing tones, “but I have always most carefully protected her from the society of common children, and I would rather keep her by my side.”
So the ladies went round to see Auntie Jessie, with the result that in all Draeth no child went to bed that night more happily than Ruthie Tregennis, Tommy’s cousin and future wife.