"Lady Benyon is going to honour us with a visit," he began in his most impressive manner. There is no snob so inveterate as your snob of good birth; and Uncle James said "Lady" as if it were a privilege just to pronounce the word. "She will arrive this afternoon at a quarter to four." "But you will be practising," Beth exclaimed. "The rites of hospitality must be observed," he condescended to inform her. "Lady Benyon is my mother, Beth," Aunt Grace Mary put in irrelevantly. "I know," Beth answered. "Your papa was a baronet; Uncle James loves baronets; that was why he married you." Having thus disposed of Aunt Grace Mary, Beth turned to the other end of the table, and resumed: "But you went on practising when _we_ arrived, Uncle James." Uncle James gazed at her blandly, then looked at his sister with an agreeable smile. "Lady Benyon will probably like to see the children. You do not dress them in the latest fashion, I observe." "They _are_ shabby," Mrs. Caldwell acknowledged with a sigh, apologetically. Beth shovelled some spoonfuls of pudding into her mouth very quickly. "That's the money bother again," she said, and then she sang out at the top of her voice-- "Bryan O'Lynn had no breeches to wear, He bought a sheepskin for to make him a pair, With the skinny side out, and the woolly side in, 'They're warm in the winter,' said Bryan O'Lynn." "I suppose it would be quite impossible to suppress this child?" Uncle James lisped with deceptive mildness. "I observe that she joins in the conversation always, with great intelligence and her mouth full. It might be better, perhaps, if she emptied her mouth. However, I suppose it would be impossible to teach her." "Not at all," Beth answered for herself, cheerfully. "I'm not too stupid to empty my mouth! Only just you tell me what it is you want. Don't bottle things up. I expect I've been speaking with my mouth full ever since I came, and you've been hating me for it; but you never told me." "May I ask," said Uncle James politely, "by whom you were informed that I 'bottled things up'?" "Ah, that would be telling," said Beth, and recommenced gobbling her pudding, to the intense relief of some of the party. Great-Aunt Victoria Bench, sitting upright opposite, looked across the table at the child, and a faint smile flickered over her wrinkled rose-leaf cheek. Beth finished her pudding, dropped her spoon on her plate with a clatter, leant back in her chair, and sighed with satisfaction. She possessed a horrid fascination for Uncle James. Almost everything she did was an offence to him, yet he could not keep his eyes off her or let her alone. "Pudding seems to be a weakness of hers," he now observed. "I hope her voracity is satisfied. I should say that it resembles the voracity of the caterpillar." "What's voracity, Aunt Victoria?" Beth asked. "Greediness," Aunt Victoria rejoined sententiously.