“I have ventured, also, Miss Audrey, to command a small dinner at the King’s to-night, which I am hopeful that Mrs O’Brady will do me the honour of eating with me. I will tell you what I have ordered——”
“Had you not better tell mamma that? She might like to be the first recipient of so delicious a communication.”
“You may be right. I think you probably are. When one considers the matter broadly, one perceives that that would only be just to Mrs O’Brady. I will tell you afterwards, Miss Audrey; only a pleasure postponed, that’s all. This parcel is a trifle heavy; I think, with your permission, I should like to——”
As he began to look about for a spot on which to deposit his twenty-pound turkey, his eyes travelled in my direction. When they reached me, he started. He came a step nearer, as if, at that distance, his poor, faded, old eyes were not perfectly sure that it was I. Having made up his mind upon the point, he quite obviously started again, coming close up to me with a sort of little canter. At the same moment I was conscious—though the Major was not—that mamma had entered the room, and stood just inside the door, listening and looking on.
“My dear Miss Norah, fancy my not noticing you before—most extraordinary! Can’t think how it could have happened. I’m sure, I beg ten thousand pardons. However, better late than never; you know the old saying, my dear Miss Norah. Allow me to present you with this truffled turkey—done by my own man. If I were to tell you, in confidence, what I pay the fellow, you’d stare. I’ve reason to believe that, before you put your fork into him, this bird will have cost me five pounds. Yet I dare to assert that, by the time you have done with him, you will agree with me that he was worth every farthing of it, Miss Norah, every farthing.”
“Thank you, Major Tibbet, but I do not care for truffled turkey.”
“Not care for truffled turkey! What are you saying, Miss Norah? You can’t mean it. I suppose it’s a jest of yours—an excellent one, too. Because, of course, it isn’t possible that anyone shouldn’t care for truffled turkey.”
“It is not only possible, but, in my case, it’s an actual fact. I do not care for truffled turkey, Major Tibbet. Nor, in any case, could I accept a gift which was intended for my mother.”
When I said this, I saw mamma—who, with the aid of her pince-nez, had been taking the liveliest interest in the Major’s remarks—give a kind of little jump. I knew that she liked truffled turkey, and that, indeed, on the subject of eating and drinking, generally, she and the Major were in considerable sympathy. I suppose that, when people grow old, they are fonder of that kind of thing than when they are young.
That gormandising Major, in complete unconsciousness of who was standing behind him, threw mamma’s prior claim upon his wretched bird entirely overboard.