Tisdall slumped to the floor with a crash.
Grant, who was sitting on the other side of the large table sprang to action, but the skinny child, with no sign of haste or dismay, was there first.
"Dear me!" she said, getting the slumped body under the shoulders from behind and turning it over.
Grant took a cushion from a chair.
"I shouldn't do that," she said. "You let their heads stay back unless it's apoplexy. And he's a bit young for that, isn't he?"
She was loosening collar and tie and shirt band with the expert detachment of a cook paring pastry from a pie edge. Grant noticed that her sunburnt wrists were covered with small scars and scratches of varying age, and that they stuck too far out of her out-grown sleeves.
"You'll find brandy in the cupboard, I think. Father isn't allowed it, but he has no self-control."
Grant found the brandy and came back to find her slapping Tisdall's unconscious face with a light insistent tapotement.
"You seem to be good at this sort of thing," Grant said.
"Oh, I ran the Guides at school." She had a voice at once precise and friendly. "A ve -ry silly institution. But it varied the routine. That is the main thing, to vary the routine."