'Now Theo,' his mother chided, 'stop intimidating the poor girl! Come, sit down, and join us.'
Releasing her hand, he regarded Pamela directly for the first time, and she found his manner somewhat threatening.
'You are going to find that my mother has a penchant for acting out of impulse,' he said, seating himself in front of her beside his mother, 'and that the rest of us usually end up dealing with the consequences,' he added, his manner polite but stern. He was all-too-obviously more than an equal to his mother. 'She should never have brought you all the way here, to a strange country with rather quaint, idiosyncratic ways. Yorkshire people, I'm afraid you're going to find, do not take quickly to newcomers. One can live generations in Yorkshire and still be considered a latecomer. However, you're here now, and Mother seems to have her mind set on your staying, so I guess we'll just have to make the best of it. Mother tells me you can type.'
'Better than forty words a minute,' Mrs. Dewhurst answered for her, but in a way that showed she wasn't the least bit intimidated by her own son.
Theo sighed. 'Mother, please, I'm sure the girl has a tongue of her own. Fine, so you can type. Have you ever taken dictation?'
'A little,' she blurted, 'for Father Mugford-'
'Splendid.' He said this as though it were the least splendid thing he'd ever heard. 'Do you have any knowledge of accounting? of keeping ledgers? of bookkeeping?-'
'Theo,' Mrs. Dewhurst interrupted in a warning tone, 'if you don't start being civil, I am going to disown you.'
To Pamela's surprise, he burst out laughing, and for a brief moment there was honest laughter in his eyes. But only briefly. 'My dear Mother, I always thought that you'd will your estates to the stray cats of this world. She would, too,' he said to Pamela. She thought she detected something in his eyes, as though he thought of her as a stray cat. And she wasn't sure, but she thought she detected veiled anger; perhaps even hatred.
Little was said in the ensuing twenty minutes or so as they ate breakfast. Pamela herself said not a word, and found that she had entirely lost her appetite. She kept her gaze lowered to the vicinity of her plate and tried not to notice the imposing figure seated before her.
Later, they went out to the car and got in, Pamela on the left, Mrs. Dewhurst in the middle, and Theo on the right. Within moments they were on the motorway heading north on the three-hour drive to the Dewhurst's place in Yorkshire.