Page:The principal girl (IA principalgirl00snai).pdf/147

 *tenance and very grande dame, as you could tell by her Carriage. Looked through her folders, and saw Number 10 over the fanlight; and as this she did, one of those terrible flashes of feminine intuition overtook Mary, that this must surely be Mother.

Yes, Mother undoubtedly. Had not Philip himself the same bland, blonde frontispiece; the same ample look of nourishment; the same air of deliberation as of one a little slow in the uptake; the same faint far-off suggestion of a finely grown vegetable? And to the quick eye of the feminine observer through the kitchen curtains, there were certain things pertaining to Mother which, up to the present, Son had not developed.

The clang of the front door bell reverberated through the basement.

"Drat it, Miss Mary," said Cook. "And me not dressed yet. Would you mind letting in Sir Swire?"

"Why, of course," said Miss Mary.

"But hadn't you better leave your knife and your pertater, Miss Mary?"

"Oh, Sir Swire won't mind those, Hannah; they'll amuse him," said the Bad Girl of the Family, who was half-way up the kitchen stairs already.

Mother upon the doorstep, in her new ermine tippet, was shocked not a little, deep down in the recesses of her nature. Still of course she was far too well found in the ways of the world to give her feelings publication.