“I should say you must be just a little fanciful on the subject of likenesses. Some people are.”
“I do not think so. If I am I did not know it. I——”
The inner door opened and Lady Jenkins appeared, becloaked and beshawled, with a great green hood over her head, and leaning on Lettice Lane. Madame got up and threw a mantle on her own shoulders.
“Dear Lady Jenkins, I was just coming to see for you. Captain Collinson called in to give you his arm, but he did not wait. And here’s Mr. Johnny Ludlow, sent in by Mrs. Knox to ask whether we are all dead.”
“Ay,” said Lady Jenkins, nodding to me as she sat down on the sofa: “but I should like a cup of tea before we start.”
“A cup of tea?”
“Ay; I’m thirsty. Let me have it, Patty.”
She spoke the last words in an imploring tone, as if Patty were her mistress. Madame threw off her mantle again, untied the green hood of her lady, and sent Lettice to make some tea.
“You had better go back and tell Mrs. Knox we are coming, though I’m sure I don’t know when it will be,” she said aside to me.
I did as I was told; and had passed through the garden-gate, when my eye fell upon Master Richard Knox. He was standing on the grass in the moonlight, near the clump of laurels, silently contorting his small form into cranks and angles, after the gleeful manner of Punch in the show when he has been giving his wife a beating. Knowing that agreeable youth could not keep himself out of mischief if he tried, I made up to him.