“What, the tea?” cried the Canon. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, to take sugar. I don’t approve of hydrocarbons.”
“Rough on the hydrocarbons, ain’t it?” murmured Lord Spratte.
The Canon with a smile addressed himself again to Mrs. Railing.
“And how do you take your tea, dear lady?”
“Oh, I don’t pay no attention to all this stuff of Louie’s and Bertie’s,” that good creature replied, a broad fat smile sending her red face into a pucker of little wrinkles. “Sometimes they just about give me the ’ump, I can tell you.”
“Ma, do mind what you’re saying,” cried Miss Railing, much shocked at this manner of speaking.
“Well, you do, Louie—that is Louise. She don’t like me to call her Louie. She says it’s so common. You know, my lord, my children was christened Bertram and Louise. But we’ve always called ’em Bertie and Louie, and I can’t get out of the ’abit of it now. But, lor’, when your children grow up and get on in the world they want to turn everything upside down. Now what do you think Bertie wants me to do?”
“I can’t imagine,” said the Canon.
“Well, would you believe it, he wants me to take the pledge.”