"Your aunt's calling you," he said.
Mrs. Mills was out on the pavement, scooping at the air with her right arm. Gertie instinctively obeyed the order; Mr. Trew kept pace with her. The three entered the shop, and Mrs. Mills, with a touch of her heel, closed the door, went inside the tobacco counter, and, across it, spoke rapidly and vehemently, with the aid of emphatic gesture, for five minutes by the clock. Mr. Trew, disregarding rules of etiquette, sat down, whilst the two stood, and became greatly interested in the mechanism of a cigar-cutter.
"Who told you all this, aunt?" asked the girl calmly, when Mrs. Mills had finished.
"The lady customer who was here when you went out. Do you deny it? Of course, if it isn't correct that you've been seen walking about with a young swell, I've lost my temper for nothing."
"Girls will be girls," interposed Mr. Trew.
"Not in my house."
"It's all perfectly correct," announced Gertie.
Mrs. Mills looked around in a dazed way.
"Trew," she cried, "what's to be done?"
"You've had your say, old beauty," he remarked slowly. "Now let me and her go into the parlour and have some music—music of a different kind."