He has raised himself on his elbow, the more safely to receive their onslaught. He is aware of an idiosyncrasy of Miss Harborough's—that of narrating hideous crimes as having been committed by her little brother, which have in reality been executed by herself.
'If it was Franky who upset the water-can, how is it that it is your frock which is wet?' asks he judicially.
She does not answer, beyond putting her head affectedly on one side, and rubbing her shoulder against her ear.
'Are you sure that it was not you, and not Franky?'
Instantly, with the greatest ease and affability, she acknowledges that it was she; and the nurses at that moment coming up, she is about to be walked off for chastisement, when weakly interceded for by Talbot, who has the further lunacy to request that both children may be left in his charge. After that he has a very eventful morning. He is in turn a pony, a giraffe, a hyæna, a flamingo (unhappily for him the little Harboroughs have lately visited the Zoological Gardens), a rabbit (about the natural history and domestic life of which animal he hears some very startling facts), and the captain of a robber band. Finally, he has to take part in a terrible game—the one most dreaded by their family of all in the little Harborough repertoire—Ingestre Hall destroyed by fire, done with bricks. And the odd thing is that he likes it—likes it better than Downing Street and the great statesman.
When the luncheon gong sounds he can hardly realise that it is two o'clock. He is so much dishevelled by his transmigrations—which, indeed, have been as numerous as Buddha's—that, after having repaired the injuries to his toilette, he finds that everybody is already in the dining-room—finds the inevitable chair left vacant for him beside Lady Betty. He has sat by Lady Betty through so many luncheons and dinners that it has lost the gloss of novelty, and they speak to each other scarcely more than a husband and wife would do. It is her voice that he hears prevailing over those of the rest of the company as he enters the room, for she has not Cordelia's gift.
'Lambton? Are they any relation to Lord Durham?'
'I do not think so,' replies the hostess carelessly. 'Their father was a small squire in these parts, who over-farmed himself, and died very much out at elbows. And their mother—well, their mother was nothing but a very poor creature' (with a shrug), 'who was always fancying herself ill, and whom nobody believed until she proved it by dying! Ha! ha! Poor soul! I do not think that anybody cried much, except Peggy; she cried her eyes out.'
'Not quite out,' thinks Talbot, remembering the severe blue darts that shot at him over-night; and to his own soul, at this testimony to her tender-heartedness, he says, 'Nice Peggy!'
'Which was Peggy?' asks Mr. Harborough, looking up from his cutlet; 'the big one? Yes? I like Peggy. I do not know when I have seen such a good-looking girl.'