“Everything is quite all right, Master Willie,” replied the housekeeper equably.
This redoubtable woman differed from her daughter Claire in being tall and thin and beaked like an eagle. One of the well-known Bromage family of Marshott-in-the-Dale, she had watched with complacent pride the Bromage nose developing in her sons and daughters, and it had always been a secret grief to her that Claire, her favourite, who inherited so much of her forceful and determined character, should have been the only one of her children to take nasally after the inferior, or Lippett, side of the house. Mr. Lippett had been an undistinguished man, hardly fit to mate with a Bromage and certainly not worthy to be resembled in appearance by the best of his daughters.
“You’re sure there will be enough to eat?”
“There will be ample to eat.”
“How about drinks?” said Mr. Braddock, and was reminded by the word of a grievance which had been rankling within his bosom ever since his last expedition to the dining room. He pulled down the corners of his white waistcoat and ran his finger round the inside of his collar. “Mrs. Lippett,” he said, “I—er—I was outside the dining room just now——”
“Were you, Master Willie? You must not fuss so. Everything will be quite all right.”
“——and I overheard you telling Sleddon not to let me have any champagne to-night,” said Mr. Braddock, reddening at the outrageous recollection.
The housekeeper stiffened.
“Yes, I did, Master Willie. And your dear mother, if she were still with us, would have given the very same instructions—after what my daughter Claire told me of what occurred the other night and the disgraceful condition you were in. What your dear mother would have said, I don’t know!”
Mrs. Lippett’s conversation during the last twenty years of Willoughby Braddock’s life had dealt largely with speculations as to what his dear mother would have said of various ventures undertaken or contemplated by him.