This warning was addressed to her younger brother and sister, who, together with herself, had joined the Welwyn family at a date subsequent to that upon which we first made its acquaintance. Amelia was twelve years of age, The Caution five, and The Cure some twenty minutes younger. At present the latter young lady, in the course of a life-and-death struggle for the possession of the jettisoned piece of b.u.t.tered toast, had become involved in an embrace with her brother, so involved that it seemed as if no one unfamiliar with the use of letter-locks could ever unravel them. However, the experienced Amelia succeeded; and having shaken the skirts of The Cure a little lower and pulled the knicker-bockers of The Caution a little higher, dumped both combatants upon the sofa and divided the now hopelessly mangled booty between them.

"And don't let me catch you at it again," she added magisterially.

"Only Monday morning, and your pinnies no more use than nothing! Come in!"

At the sight of the figure which appeared in the doorway in response to this invitation The Caution and The Cure set up a combined howl of apprehension, only to be quelled by a dole of lump-sugar--hush-money in the most literal sense of the word--supplied by the resourceful Amelia.

"Come in, Mr. Mehta Ram! What can we do for you this morning?" she enquired maternally. "Never mind those two"--indicating the quaking infants on the sofa. "It's their consciences, that's all. You see, I always threaten to give them to you when they are naughty, and now they think that you have really come for them. It's all right," she added, turning rea.s.suringly to the culprits. "Mr. Ram won't eat you this time."

Benevolent Mr. Mehta Ram beamed upon the chubby buccaneers through his gold spectacles.

"Believe me, Miss Amelia," he replied, "I could cherish no cannibalistic designs upon such jolly kids. Is your excellent mother within her domicile, or has she gone for a tata?" (Mr. Ram prided himself upon his knowledge of colloquial English.)

"She is out--shopping. Tell me your trouble," said businesslike Amelia.

"I came here," began the Bengalee, "to address your mother in her offeecial capacity."

"I know," said Amelia swiftly. "It was that kipper you had for breakfast. I thought it was wearing a worried look while mother was cooking it. Well, you shan't be charged for it."

Mr. Mehta Ram waved a fat and deprecating hand.

"Far be it from me," he replied, "to reflect upon the culinary ability of your excellent mother Welwyn. I came about a very different pair of shoes."

Mr. Ram then proceeded, in the curious blend of Johnsonian English and street-boy slang which const.i.tutes the vocabulary of that all-too-precocious linguist, the Babu, with all the forensic earnestness and technical verbiage of the student who has spent the past six months grappling with the intricacies of English Law, to bring a weighty indictment against the gentleman on the second-floor back.

"In brief," he concluded, "Mr. Pumpherston has impounded my sugar-basin."

"Broken it, you mean?"

"No, Miss Amelia. He has confiscated it--pinched it, in fact.

And"--Mr. Ram swept onward to his peroration, his brown face glistening with mild indignation--"although I have a.s.sured him upon my word of honour that there will be father and mother of a row if same is not returned forthwith, he merely projects the sneer of scorn upon my humble pet.i.tion."

"Oh, does he?" exclaimed Miss Amelia, with heat. "Mr. Pumpherston has been enquiring for trouble for a long while now, and this time he is going to get it. Mother"--as Mrs. Welwyn, humming a cheerful air, entered the room and began to deposit parcels upon the table, much as a mountain deposits an avalanche--"here is Mr. Ram says Mr. Pumpherston has sneaked his sugar-basin and won't give it back."

"What's that, Ducky?" enquired Mrs. Welwyn, breaking off her little tune. She was a large, still handsome, and most unsuitably attired matron of about forty-five. Her task (and be it added, her joy) in life was the support of a rather useless husband, of whom she was inordinately proud because he happened to have been born a gentleman; and all the energy and resource of her honest simple nature had been devoted to the single aim of raising her children to what she considered his level rather than permit them to remain upon her own. In the case of the girls she had been singularly successful. Percy was her failure, but fortunately she regarded him as her greatest triumph. (Providence is very merciful to mothers in this respect.) And her love had not been utterly vain, for although her taste in dress was disastrous and her control of the letter "h" uncertain, her family were devoted to her.

"You ask Mr. Mehta Ram all about it!" replied Amelia darkly.

"The aforesaid Pumpherston," resumed Mr. Ram at once, "has threatened me with personal violence--to wit, a d.a.m.n good skelp in the eyeball. I quote his _ipsissima verba_."

"Oh, _has_ he?" replied Mrs. Welwyn, with decision. "Well that puts the lid on Pumpherston, anyway. He's behind with his rent as it is; so the moment our Perce gets home to-night, up goes Perce to the second-floor back, and out goes my lord Pumpherston! I never could abide Scotchies, anyhow."

"Martha," enquired a piping but painfully distinct voice from the fireside, "what does that black 'eathen want in 'ere?"

"All right, Mother," replied Mrs. Welwyn. She turned soothingly to the Babu. "We'll put things straight for you, Mr. Ram," she said rea.s.suringly. "You'll get justice in this country, never fear!

Good-morning!"

Mr. Mehta Ram, inarticulate with grat.i.tude, salaamed himself out of the room, to the manifest relief of The Caution and The Cure. Mrs. Welwyn followed him onto the landing.

"You'll get your sugar-basin back, double-quick!" she announced in a loud voice. "That'll frighten Pumpherston," she observed grimly, re-entering the room and shutting the double doors behind her.

"It's a pity losing a lodger, Mother," said Amelia.

"Yes, dearie, it is," agreed Mrs. Welwyn with a sigh. "But it can't be helped. I'll tell you what, though. Run after that blackamoor and ask him if he has n't got a friend wants a room--a nice peaceable creature like himself. The Museum Reading-Room is full of them, Father says.

Tell him to pick us a good one. Take the children up with you. Father will be in here for his breakfast in a minute."

As the door closed upon Amelia and her charges, Mrs. Welwyn crossed the room to her surviving parent's side.

"Well, Mother," she enquired cheerily, arranging the old lady's shawl, "how goes it to-day? World a bit wrong?"

The genial Mrs. Banks did not answer immediately. Obviously she was meditating a suitable repartee. Presently it came.

"When is that good-for-nothing 'usband of yours going to get up?" she enquired.

Mrs. Welwyn flushed red, but patted her cantankerous parent good-humouredly on the shoulder.

"That's all right, Mother," she said. "You mind your business and I'll mind mine. Lucius sits up very late at night, working,--long after you and I have gone to bed,--so he's ent.i.tled to a good long lay in the morning."

"Pack o' nonsense!" observed Mr. Welwyn's mother-in-law. "I'd learn 'im!"

"Good-morning, good people!"

Lucius Welwyn strode into the room with all the buoyancy and cheerfulness of a successful man of forty. As a matter of fact he was a failure of fifty-nine, but he still posed to himself with fair success as a retired man of letters. His role was that of the philosophic onlooker, who prefers scholarly ease and detachment to the sordid strivings of a commercial age. In reality he was an idle, shiftless, slightly dissipated, but thoroughly charming humbug. He was genuinely attached to his wife, and in his more candid moments readily and bitterly acknowledged the magnitude and completeness of his debt to her.

He possessed a quick smile and considerable charm of manner; and when he was attired, not as now in a dressing-gown and slippers, but in the garments of ceremony, he still looked what he undoubtedly was--a scholar and gentleman.

"Good-morning, Father. Your breakfast is all ready. Sit down, do, and take it while it's hot," Mrs. Welwyn besought him.

"Breakfast?" exclaimed Mr. Welwyn with infectious heartiness.

"Capital!" He seated himself before the tray. "A good wife and a good breakfast--some men are born lucky!"

"Some men," remarked an acid voice, "are born a deal luckier than what they deserve to be."

Mr. Welwyn, who was sitting with his back to the oracle, did not turn round.

"That you, Grandma?" he said lightly, pouring out his tea. "You are in your usual beatific frame of mind, I am glad to note."

"None of your long words with me, Lucius Welwyn!" countered his aged relative with spirit. "I never 'ad no schooling, but I knows a waster when I sees 'un."

"Kidneys? Delicious!" remarked Mr. Welwyn, lifting the dish-cover.

"Martha, you spoil me."

This p.r.o.nouncement received such hearty endors.e.m.e.nt from the fireside that Mrs. Welwyn crossed the room and laid a firm hand upon her sprightly parent's palsied shoulder.

"Now then, Mother," she said briskly, "you trot across the landing to your own room. I'm going to turn this one out presently. I've lit a fire for you."

Mrs. Banks, who knew full well that behind a smiling face her daughter masked a hopelessly partisan spirit, rose to her infirm feet and departed, grumbling. At the door she paused to glare malignantly upon the back of her well-connected son-in-law. But that unworthy favourite of fortune was helping himself to kidneys.

"Seems to me," remarked Mrs. Welwyn apologetically, as the door closed with a vicious snap, "that Mother got up on the wrong side of her bed this morning. You don't mind, do you, Father dear?"

"I? Not in the least," replied Mr. Welwyn with much cheerfulness. "I find your worthy mother, if anything, a tonic. You are a good soul, Martha. Sit down and have a cup of tea with me: it must be some time since you breakfasted. Take mine."