The children will benefit from having Grandma to turn to when Mother is not available; and if you have several children, that childminding benefit wil... be valuable. Look upon it as an opportunity to enhance our children's lives. In addition, you can spend more time on business matters, if Phoebe is there to look after the children. I do expect you and Isabella will both have several children, don't you?"Euphemia was still flustered. "I am confused, Ebenezer. My instincts say this is wrong, but. When nothing happened I dared to hope that maybe, just maybe, he might finally be running low on ammo.It occurred to me that all this time neither of us had said a word, not even a "come out and I'll make it a quick, clean kill!" from him. Maybe he was the strong silent type.Me? What was I supposed to say? "Hey, why are you trying to kill me?" didn't seem like much of a conversation starter, and "I surrender" wouldn't fly with him either.I was dawdling. Like it or not it was showdown time. I. He could hear Katie in the kitchen preparing dinner. He was reading the newspaper when he looked up to see Katie walk in carrying a serving tray with a drink on it. His jaw dropped in shock when he saw what she was wearing.Katie had on a little French maid's outfit. There was a black mini dress with white apron and a little white hat. The dress was so short that it didn't cover her black mesh nylon tops. She even had on black garters straps holding up the nylons. On her feet she had the highest. They were non stop chattering as usual ... girls! but we couldn’t make out the words, both posh accents, upper crust slurring their vowels and with such speed. We were sneaky not to be discovered, because you never know what you might see or hear. We decided to keep still and hidden, sweat pouring out of us, more excitement than anything else. The taller girl, who I recognised as the manor resident took her boots and socks off and rolled her jodhpurs up, paddling to sample the water.