andra fringe and long, rather mottled nose. She took a bunch of keys from a chatelaine she wore at her waist.
Wakefield bounced on his chair. "Let me go, please do, Renny! I love the cellar and I hardly ever get there. May I go to the cellar for a treat, Renny?"
Renny, key in hand, turned to Nicholas. "What do you suggest, Uncle Nick?"
Nicholas rumbled: "A couple of quarts of Chianti."
"Oh, come now, I'm in earnest."
"What have you got?"
"Besides the keg of ale and the native wine, there's nothing but a few bottles of Burke's Jamaica and some sloe gin—and Scotch, of course."
Nicholas smiled sardonically. "And you call that a wine cellar!"
"Well," replied his nephew, testily, "it's always been called the wine cellar. We can't stop calling it that, even if there is nothing much in it. Aunt?"
"I thought," said Ernest, "that we had half a bottle of French vermouth."
"That's up in my room," replied Nicholas, curtly. "A little rum and water, with a touch of lemon juice, will suit me, Renny."
"Aunt?"
"A glass of native port, my dear. And I really think Finch should have one, too, studying as he does."
Poor Finch did not wait for the ironic laughter which followed this appeal in his behalf to slump still lower in his chair, to crimson in deprecatory embarrassment. Yet, even as he did so, he felt a warm rush of love toward Augusta. She was not against him, anyhow.
Renny moved in the direction of the hall, and, in passing Wakefield's chair, he caught the expectant little boy by the arm and took him along, as though he had been a parcel.
They descended the stairs to the basement, where their nostrils were assailed by the mysterious smells that Wake loved. Here was the great kitchen with its manifold odours, the coal cellar, the fruit cellar, the wine cellar, the storeroom, and the three tiny bedrooms for servants,
