Boo’s face cleared.
“And we’ll tell her mammy telled me to hit her!”
Jack’s cherub face grew grave.
“N-n-no. We won’t do that, Boo. Mammy’s a bad ’un to split on.”
Jack had once overheard this said on the staircase by Lord Kenilworth, and his own experiences had convinced him of the truth of it. “Mammy can be cruel nasty,” he added, with great solemnity of aspect and many painful personal recollections.
Mrs. Massarene had remained under the tree digesting the water she had drunk, and the memory of the blunder she had made with regard to Mrs. Courcy. She ought to have known that there is nothing more perilous than to judge by appearances, for this is a fact to be learned in kitchens as well as palaces. But she had not known it, and by not knowing it had offended a person who went en intime to Balmoral, and Berlin, and Bernsdorff!
Half an hour later, when she slowly and sorrowfully walked back through the gardens of her hotel, to go in to luncheon, two bright cherubic apparitions came toward her over the grass.
Walking demurely hand-in-hand, looking the pictures of innocent infancy, Jack and Boo, having had their twelve o’clock dinner, dedicated their united genius to the finding and besieging of the old fat woman.
“How’s ’oo do?” said Boo very affably, whilst her brother, leaving her the initiative, pulled his sky-blue Tam o’ Shanter cap off his golden curls with his best possible manner.
Their victim was enchanted by their overtures, and forgot that she was hungry, as these radiant little Gainsborough figures blocked her path. They were welcome to her as children, but as living portions of the peerage they were divinities.