"How about the summer-house?" she suggested, hopefully. For the summer-house locker contained an assortment of old tennis-bats, mallets and balls, that might prove more stimulating than rabbits and doves. Roy offered no objection; so they straggled across a corner of the lawn to a narrower strip behind the tall yew hedge.
The grown-ups were gathered under the twin beeches; and away at the far end of the lawn Roy's mother and Tara's mother were strolling up and down in the sun.
Again Roy noticed how Joe Bradley stared: and as they rounded the corner of the hedge he remarked suddenly "I say! There's that swagger ayah of yours walking with Lady Despard. She's jolly smart, for an ayah. Did you bring her from India? You never said you'd been there."
Roy started and went hot all over. "Well, I have—just on a visit. And she's not an ayah. She's my Mummy!"
Joe Bradley opened his mouth as well as his eyes, which made him look plainer than ever.
"Golly! what a tale! White people don't have ayahs for Mothers—not in my India. I s'pose your Pater married her out there?"
"He didn't. And I tell you she's not an ayah."
Roy's low voice quivered with anger. It was as if ten thousand little flames had come alight inside him. But you had to try and be polite to visitors; so he added with a virtuous effort: "She's a really and truly Princess—so there!"
But that unspeakable boy, instead of being impressed, laughed in the rudest way.
"Don't excite, you silly kid. I'm not as green as you are. Besides—who cares——?"