Her butler, Seaman, announced luncheon with the reverence of a Second-Adventist. Annan offered his arm to the dumpy old woman.
Only her thin, high-bridged, arrogant nose redeemed her features of a retired charwoman. Watery eyes inspected him across the table; a little withered chin tucked between dewlaps, a sagging, discontented mouth, a mottled skin, concluded the ensemble.
White lace collar and cuffs turned over the black gown did what was sartorially possible for Mrs. Magnelius Grandcourt. Otherwise, the famous string of cherry-sized pearls dangled to what should have been her waist.
“It appears,” she said, “that you still inhabit your alley.”
“Yes, Barry-in-our-alley,” he said cheerfully.
“When are you going to move to a suitable neighbourhood?” she inquired with that peculiar pitch of tone usually, in her sex, indicative of displeasure.
“I like to be quaint,” he explained, grinning.
After a pause and a shift to the next course: “I don’t know where you get your taste for squalour,” she said. “You didn’t inherit it.”
“Didn’t one of our ancestors haunt bar-maids?” he enquired guilelessly. “I always understood that was where we acquired our bar-sinister——”
“Come, Barry,” she said sharply; sat staring at him in a cold rage that Seaman’s ears should have been polluted by such a pleasantry.