it. Do you understand? I won’t have you cheapening yourself.’
There was a crash. It was Aunt Dahlia dropping her coffee—cup, and I could appreciate her emotion. She was feeling precisely as I had felt on learning from Percy that the Wooster Darts Sweep ticket had changed hands, leaving Stilton free to attack me with tooth and claw. There is nothing that makes a woman sicker than the sudden realization that somebody she thought she was holding in the hollow of her hand isn’t in the hollow of her hand by a jugful. So far from being in the hollow of her hand, L.G. Trotter was stepping high, wide and handsome with his hat on the side of his head, and I wasn’t surprised that the thing had shaken her to her foundation garments.
In the silence which followed L.G. Trotter’s response to this wifely ultimatum — it was, if I remember correctly, ‘Okay’ — Seppings appeared in the doorway.
He was carrying a silver salver, and on this salver lay a pearl necklace.