great-stepuncle?" she had asked.

"I was once. What art going to do, lass?"

"I'm going to get our tea," she had said.

At the words, _our_ tea, the antique James Ollerenshaw, who had never
thought to have such a sensation again, was most distinctly conscious of
an agreeable, somewhat disturbing sensation of being tickled in the
small of his back.

"Well," he had asked her, "what can I do?"

"You can go out," she had replied. "Wouldn't it be a good thing for you
to go out for a walk? Tea will be ready at half-past four."

"I go for no walk," he said, positively....

"Yes, that's all right," she had murmured, but not in response to his
flat refusal to obey her. She had been opening the double cupboard and
the five drawers which constituted the receptacles of the
scullery-larders; she had been spying out the riches and the poverty of
the establishment. Then she had turned to him, and, instead of engaging
him in battle, she had just smiled at him, and said: "Very well. As you
wish. But do go into the front room, at any rate."

And there he was in the middle room, the kitchen, listening to her
movements behind the door. He heard the running of water, and then the
mild explosion of lighting the second ring of the gas-stove; the first
had been lighted by Mrs. Butt. Then he heard nothing whatever for years,