“Explain what, grannie?” I inquired.
“None of that pretence! Not only have you been most outrageously insulting to Mr Hawden when I sent him with you, but you also deliberately and wilfully disobeyed me.”
Uncle Julius listened attentively, and Hawden looked at me with such a leer of triumph that my fingers tingled to smack his cars. Turning to my grandmother, I said distinctly and cuttingly:
“Grannie, I did not intentionally disobey you. Disobedience never entered my head. I hate that thing. His presence was detestable to me. When he got out at the gate I could not resist the impulse to drive off and leave him there. He looked such a complete jackdaw that you would have laughed yourself to see him.”
“Dear, oh dear! You wicked hussy, what will become of you!” And grannie shook her head, trying to look stern, and hiding a smile in her serviette.
“Your manners are not improving, Sybylla. I fear you must be incorrigible,” said aunt Helen.
When uncle Jay-Jay heard the whole particulars of the affair, he lay back in his chair and laughed fit to kill himself.
“You ought to be ashamed to always encourage her in her tomboyish ways, Julius. It grieves me to see she makes no effort to acquire a ladylike demeanour,” said grannie.
Mr Hawden had come off second-best, so he arose from his half-finished meal and stamped out, banging the door after him, and muttering something about “a disgustingly spoilt and petted tomboy”, “a hideous barbarian”, and so forth.
Uncle Jay-Jay related that story to everyone, dwelling with great delight upon the fact that Frank Hawden was forced to walk four miles in the heat and dust.