CHAPTER XVII

THE WORD "SWANK"

"That's how it goes, 'Melia," panted Tilly, whirling her partner into an armchair. "It's quite easy, really; Dicky taught me in the billiard-room on Saturday night in ten minutes. Hallo, hallo, hallo! Here I am, everybody! Hallo, Mother darling!"

Mrs. Welwyn gently parried the approaching embrace.

"Here's your father, dear," she remarked, with the least tinge of reproof in her voice.

"Hallo, Dad! I did n't see you," exclaimed Tilly, kissing her male parent excitedly.

"Welcome home, my daughter!" said Mr. Welwyn. "Now kiss your mother."

Tilly had already begun to do so, and an eager conversation followed.

"Of course, we've heard a bit from Perce," began Mrs. Welwyn at once, drawing the pins out of her daughter's hat, "and my word! you seem to have got into the very thick of it this time, and no mistake!"

"I should just think so," gabbled Tilly. "Such a place, Mother! Billiard-rooms, and garages, and butlers, and a fire in your bedroom and a hot bottle in your bed, and a maid to put you into your clothes, and I don't know what all! And I was introduced to a lot of future relations. There was Lady Adela. She tried to patronise me, but was n't much good. Then Sylvia, the daughter. I hate her--she is a cat. And Connie Carmyle. She is no relation, but I love her. And Father Mainwaring, he is a dear. He says he was at Cambridge with you, Dad."

Mr. Welwyn put down the newspaper.

"What is that?" he enquired in a sharp voice. "Cambridge?"

"Yes. He does n't remember you at all distinctly," said Tilly, "but says he has an impression that you were the most brilliant man of your year."

"If that," remarked Mr. Welwyn, in a distinctly relieved tone, "is all that he recollects about me, I shall be pleased to meet him again."

"How is Dicky, Tilly?" enquired Amelia.

Tilly's merry face softened.

"Dicky," she said, half to herself, "is just Dicky. He brought me as far as the door, but I would n't let him come in."

"And are they all coming to tea?" enquired Mrs. Welwyn anxiously.

"Yes--the whole boiling of them, at five this afternoon--a state call!" replied Tilly. "By the way, Mother, that was a bloomer we made about the invitation. I knew at the time we talked about it that you ought to have written a note and chanced the spelling. Her ladyship made that _quite_ plain to me."

"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Welwyn in distress. "What did she say?"

"She did n't say anything in particular," admitted Tilly, crinkling her brow. "Nothing one could take hold of, you know. Just--just--"

"Sort of snacks," suggested her mother sympathetically.

Tilly nodded her head.

"That's it," she said. "Anyhow, she has sent you a written reply. Here it is."

Mrs. Welwyn and Amelia breathed hard and respectfully at the sight of the large thin grey envelope, addressed by Lady Adela's own compelling hand.

"You read it, dearie," said Mrs. Welwyn.

"No; I'll tell you what," exclaimed Tilly. "We'll let little 'Melia read it. She does n't get much fun."

"Oh, Tilly!" cried Amelia gratefully.

She took the letter, opened it with an air, and began:--

"_My deah Mrs. Welwyn--haw!_"

There was great merriment at this, for in her own family circle Miss Amelia enjoyed a great reputation as a wit and mimic. The fact that neither she nor any of her audience, save Tilly, had ever beheld Lady Adela in the flesh detracted not a whit from their enjoyment of her performance.

"_It is really too good of you,_" continued Amelia, in the high-pitched and even tones of a lady of exceptional breeding, "_to invite us all--such a crowd of us--to come to tea on Monday. As it happens, we shall be in town that day, so Mr. Mainwaring and I propose to take you at your word, and shall be charmed to come with our son and daughter at five o'clock._"

"That'll be four cups," murmured Mrs. Welwyn abstractedly. "We can get Mehta Ram's. Go on, Ducky."

"_After our recent experience of your daughter's society--_"

Here Amelia broke off, to observe that in her opinion the last phrase sounded tabbyish.

"Never mind! Go on!" urged Mrs. Welwyn.

"_--Daughter's society, we are naturally anxious to make the acquaintance of her forbears._"

"Her four what?" asked Mrs. Welwyn in a dazed voice.

Amelia carefully examined the passage, and repeated:--

"It says 'four bears'--written as one word. Does that mean you and Dad and me and Perce?"

"If her ladyship," began Mrs. Welwyn warmly, "is going to start naming names from the Zoo--"

Tilly laid a quick hand upon her mother's arm and turned in the direction of the fireplace.

"Dad," she enquired, "what does 'forbears' mean?"

A chuckling voice from behind "The Daily Mail" enlightened her.

"The laugh is on your mother, children," said Mrs. Welwyn good-temperedly. "Finish it, 'Melia."

Amelia did so. "_What weather! Sincerely yours, Adela Mainwaring_. That's all."

"Quite enough, too!" commented Mrs. Welwyn, who still had her doubts about the four bears.

"Any way," remarked Tilly energetically, "they are coming; and we have till five o'clock to get ready for them. Hallo, Perce!"

To the company assembled entered Mr. Percy Welwyn, immaculate in frock coat, brown boots, and a rakish bowler hat.

"What oh, Sis!" he exclaimed, kissing Tilly affectionately. "Back again from the Moated Grange--eh? My dinner ready, Mother?"

"Wait a minute, Percy dear," said Tilly quickly. "I want to talk to you--all of you. Sit down, everybody. Father!"

"My daughter?"

"Come and sit here, please!"

"A round-table conference?" enquired Mr. Welwyn amiably. "Capital!"

Tilly upon her own quarter-deck was a very different being from the frightened little alien whom we saw at Shotley Beauchamp. In two minutes the Welwyn family had meekly packed themselves round the octagonal table. Tilly took the chair.

"Now, then, all of you," she began, with a suspicion of a high-strung quaver in her voice--"Father, Mother, Percy, and little 'Melia--listen to me! You know, no one better, that when I went down to Shotley Beauchamp on Saturday I meant to act perfectly square to Dicky's people--tell them who I was and what I was, and that I worked for my living and so on; and generally make sure that they did n't take me in on false pretences. Is that correct?"

"Yes--quite correct," chorused the family.

"Well," continued Tilly defiantly--"I have n't done it! I have n't said a word! There! I _couldn't_! I have seen Dicky's people, and their house, and their prosperity, and the way they look at things. They're a pretty tough proposition, the Mainwarings. They are no better born than we are; but they are rich, and stupid, and conceited, and purse-proud--"

"Tilly! Tilly!" said Mrs. Welwyn, scandalised to hear the gentry so miscalled.

"Yes, they _are_, Mother!" cried the girl passionately. "You don't know what I have had to put up with this week-end, when Dicky was n't by. Why--"

"Dicky," observed Mr. Welwyn dryly, "is also a Mainwaring, Tilly."

"Dicky," replied Tilly, with feminine contempt for the laws of heredity and environment, "may be a Mainwaring, but he does n't take after the rest of the family. But never mind Dicky for a moment. What I want to say is this. In dealing with people of this kind--people who regard those who have no money as so much dirt beneath their feet--there is only one thing that pays; and that thing," she concluded with intense conviction, "is--swank, swank, swank!"

"Good old Tilly!" shouted Percy enthusiastically; and the rest of the Welwyns, quite carried away by their small despot's earnestness, beat upon the table with their fists.

"The Mainwarings swanked for my benefit, I can tell you," continued Tilly, with cheeks glowing hotly. "They laid off to me about their town house and their country house and their shooting and their hunting and their grand relations; and they did their best--especially the daughter--to make me feel like a little dressmaker who has come in for the day."

"I bet you stood up to them, Sis," said the admiring Percy.

Tilly smiled in a dreamy, reminiscent fashion.

"I did," she said. "I matched them, brag for brag. They asked who you were, Mother. I said you were a Banks--one of _the_ Bankses--of Bedfordshire!"

Unseemly but sympathetic laughter greeted this announcement, and Mrs. Welwyn was made the recipient of several congratulatory thumps from her son and younger daughter.

"I wasn't quite sure whether it was Bedfordshire or Cambridgeshire," continued Tilly. "Where is Hitchin, anyway?"

"Hertfordshire," replied Amelia, and every one laughed again. They had all things in common, the Welwyns, especially their jokes.

"Then," Tilly proceeded, "I told them a lovely fairy-tale about our old town house. Been in the family for generations, and so on."

"So it has," said Mr. Welwyn.

"And I also told them," continued the unfilial Tilly, "that Dad was a bit of an antique himself, and could n't bear to move. Has his roots in the cellar, so to speak. You don't mind, do you, dear?" she enquired eagerly.

"My child," replied Mr. Welwyn, "I feel proud to have figured as one of your assets."

"And finally," concluded Tilly, "as I began to warm up to my work a bit, I added a few things, looking as sweet as anything all the time--like this!" (Here she treated her enraptured audience to a very creditable reproduction of Sylvia Mainwaring's languid and superior smile.) "I chatted about our billiard-room, and our old family butler, and our motor, and so on. I am afraid I lost my head a bit. I have a notion that I gave them to understand that we went yachting in the summer!"

There was more laughter, but Mrs. Welwyn added anxiously:--

"You did n't mention anything about Southend, did you, dearie?"

"Not me!" said Tilly; "though I was feeling utterly reckless by that time. For two pins I would have told them that I had been presented at Court!"

She rose to her feet.

"That is all I have to say," she announced. "I just mention these little facts to you so that when the Mainwarings come to tea this afternoon you may know what to talk about. See?"

The other members of the conference, avoiding the eager eye of the chairwoman, began to regard one another uneasily. Then Percy said:--

"Tilly, old girl, you've landed us with a bit of a shipping order, ain't you?"

Tilly nodded. "You are right," she said. "But it will only be for an afternoon. We need not invite them again."

But Percy, who was an honest youth, although he wore a dickey, hesitated.

"How about the gallant Ricardo?" he enquired. "What's his position in this glee-party? Is he with us or them?"

"Oh--Dicky?" said Tilly, with less confidence. "I have been quite square with him. I have told him everything."

"Everything?" enquired several people at once.

"A good deal, anyhow," maintained Tilly. "I have warned him that I shan't have a penny to my name; and that I have had very few of the advantages that the ordinary girl gets; and that he must take me and my people as he finds us. And he says he prefers me that way. In fact"--Tilly's thoughts flew back to Sunday's idyll in the pine wood--"he has said a good deal more than that. And if I want him and he wants me," she added eagerly, like one anxious to struggle on to less debatable ground, "what does it matter what we say or do to his silly old mother and sister? I want my Dicky!" Her eyes shone. "He loves me and I love him, and that is all there is to be said about it. Father, Mother, Percy, 'Melia"--Tilly's hands went forth appealingly--"promise that you will stand by me and see me through!"

Eight impulsive Welwyn hands closed upon Tilly's two.

"We'll see you through, Sis," said Percy reassuringly. His eye swept round the board in presidential fashion. "Those in favour?"

Four hands flew up.

"Carried unanimously!" announced Percy; while Tilly, reassured, ran round the table showering promiscuous embraces upon her relatives.

"There's the front-door bell, 'Melia," said Mrs. Welwyn, whose provident instinct never deserted her in her most exalted moments. "It may be a new lodger. Run down and see."

Amelia obeyed, and the rest of the House of Welwyn went into Committee.

"I say," remarked the far-seeing Percy; "may I enquire who is going to open the front door to our guests this afternoon?"

The Committee surveyed one another in consternation.

"None of us can't do it, that's quite plain," said Mrs. Welwyn. "They would think we had n't got a servant."

"They would be right, first time," confirmed Percy.

"The old family butler must do it," said Mr. Welwyn with a dry chuckle.

"You certainly overreached yourself in the matter of the butler, Sis," observed Percy.

"We could get the charwoman, or borrow the girl from the Rosenbaums," suggested Mrs. Welwyn.

"But I said a _butler_, Mumsie," objected Tilly dismally.

"Oh, dear, so you did," sighed Mrs. Welwyn.

Tilly pondered.

"I know what we can do," she said. "Percy must meet them, quite casually, outside in the Square, on his way home from the City--"

"And let them in with my latch-key--eh?" cried Percy. "That's the ticket!"

Mrs. Welwyn, greatly relieved, smiled upon her fertile offspring. Mr. Welwyn coughed gently.

"The word 'swank,'" he observed, "is unfamiliar to me; but as we have decided to incorporate it in our plan of campaign, may I suggest, Percy, that you allow your guests to ring the front-door bell before overtaking them?"

"Righto, Dad," said Percy. "But why?"

"Well," continued Mr. Welwyn diffidently, "it has occurred to me that when you have ushered the party into the hall, you might call down the staircase into the basement, distinctly but not ostentatiously, to some one--James, or Thomas--you can address him by any name you please--that there is no need to come up. You see the idea?"

"Dad," declared Percy, shaking his parent affectionately by the hand, "you are a marvel! Why, 'Melia, what's the trouble?"

Amelia, wide-eyed and frightened, was standing in the doorway.