They descended together to the parlour.  A white cloth for tea lay folded on the table.  It was of the finest damask that skill could choose and money buy.  It was fifteen years old, and had never been spread.  Constance would not have produced it for the first meal, had she not possessed two other of equal eminence.  On the harmonium were ranged several jams and cakes, a Bursley pork-pie, and some pickled salmon; with the necessary silver.  All was there.  Amy could not go wrong.  And crocuses were in the vases on the mantelpiece.  Her ‘garden,’ in the phrase which used to cause Samuel to think how extraordinarily feminine she was!  It was a long time since she had had a ‘garden’ on the mantelpiece.  Her interest in her chronic sciatica and in her palpitations had grown at the expense of her interest in gardens.  Often, when she had finished the complicated processes by which her furniture and other goods were kept in order, she had strength only to ‘rest.’  She was rather a fragile, small, fat woman, soon out of breath, easily marred.  This business of preparing for the advent of Sophia had appeared to her genuinely colossal.  However, she had come through it very well.  She was in pretty good health; only a little tired, and more than a little anxious and nervous, as she gave the last glance.

“Take away that apron, do!” she said to Amy, pointing to the rough apron in the corner of the sofa.  “By the way, where is Spot?”

“Spot, m’m?” Amy ejaculated.

Both their hearts jumped.  Amy instinctively looked out of the window.  He was there, sure enough, in the gutter, studying the indescribabilities of King Street.  He had obviously escaped when Amy came in from buying the time-table.  The woman’s face was guilty.

“Amy, I wonder at you!” exclaimed Constance, tragically.  She opened the door.

“Well, I never did see the like of that dog!” murmured Amy.

“Spot!” his mistress commanded.  “Come here at once.  Do you hear me?”

Spot turned sharply and gazed motionless at Constance.  Then with a toss of the head he dashed off to the corner of the Square, and gazed motionless again.  Amy went forth to catch him.  After an age she brought him in, squealing.  He was in a state exceedingly offensive to the eye and to the nose.  He had effectively got rid of the smell of soap, which he loathed.  Constance could have wept.  It did really appear to her that nothing had gone right that day.  And Spot had the most innocent, trustful air.  Impossible to make him realize that his aunt Sophia was coming.  He would have sold his entire family into servitude in order to buy ten yards of King Street gutter.

“You must wash him in the scullery, that’s all there is for it,” said Constance, controlling herself.  “Put that apron on, and don’t forget one of your new aprons when you open the door.  Better shut him up in Mr. Cyril’s bedroom when you’ve dried him.”

And she went, charged with worries, clasping her bag and her umbrella and smoothing her gloves, and spying downwards at the folds of her mantle.