David met them at the station; but Reuben persisted in going to an old-fashioned eating-house in the centre of the city, where he had been accustomed to stay on the occasion of his rare visits to Manchester, in spite of his nephew's repeated offers of hospitality.
'Noa, Davy, noa,' he said, 'yo're a gen'leman now, and yo conno' be moidered wi' oos. We'st coom and see yo—thank yo kindly,—bit we'st do for oursels i' th' sleepin' way.'
To which Hannah gave a grim and energetic assent.
When Louie had been told of their expected arrival she opened her black eyes to their very widest extent.
'Well, you'd better keep Aunt Hannah and me out of each other's way,' she remarked. 'I shall let her have it, you'll see. I'm bound to.' A remark that David did his best to forget, seeing that the encounter was now past averting.
When on Sunday afternoon the door of the Grieves's sitting-room opened to admit Hannah and Reuben Grieve, Louie was lying half asleep in an armchair by the fire, Cecile and Sandy were playing with bricks in the middle of the floor, and Dora and Lucy were chatting on the sofa.
Lucy, who had seen Reuben before, but had never set eyes on Hannah, sprang up ill at ease and awkward, but genuinely anxious to behave nicely to her husband's relations.
'Won't you take a chair? I'll go and call David. He's in the next room. This is Miss Lomax. Louie!'
Startled by the somewhat sharp call, Louie sat up and rubbed her eyes.
Hannah, resting on her stick, was standing in the middle of the floor. At sight of the familiar tyrannous face, grown parchment-white in place of its old grey hue—of the tall gaunt figure robed in the Sunday garb of rusty black which Louie perfectly remembered, and surmounted by the old head-gear—the stiff frizzled curls held in place by two small combs on the temples, the black bandeau across the front of the head, and the towering bonnet—Louie suddenly flushed and rose.