"Janet Liddon was the name—his daughter, writing on her mother's behalf. But the money they wouldn't touch with a pair of tongs. Too proud, of course."
"Of course. Oh, I do like to hear of that kind of pride! I was afraid it had died right out in these sordid times."
"So was I. I can tell you it struck me uncommonly; I thought about it a good deal; it was so unusual. I spoke to the young fellow, and he said it was his mother and sister—his sister chiefly—who wouldn't have it. And now they've opened this little place—it is they, I am convinced—to keep themselves. I'll tell you what it is, Mary, they're fine women, that mother and daughter—fine women, my dear. I'd like to look them up—sort of apologise for offering alms, as it were—eh? They'll want custom for their tea-room. Maude—I say, Maude"—the young lady of the house was so deep in talk with the governess about house decorations for a party that it was difficult to gain her ear—"Maude, my child, can't you take some of your friends to tea there, and give them a start?"
Mrs. Churchill's vague eye roamed for a moment, and she said, "What—where—I wasn't listening," like one in a dream.
"Never mind," said Mrs. Oxenham, "I will. I am to have some dresses fitted this morning——"
"Oh, are you going to Mrs. Earl?" cried her stepmother, suddenly alert and glowing. "Oh, Mary, dear, would you take a message for me? Tell her I must, I simply must have my pink gown to-morrow." To look at her, one would have imagined it a matter of life and death.
Half an hour later her husband and stepdaughter, two highly-finished, perfectly-tailored figures, sober and stately, severely unpretentious, yet breathing wealth and consequence at every point, set forth together through spacious gardens to the road and the tram—which appeared to the minute, as it always does for men of the Churchill stamp, who are never too soon or too late for anything. They rode together to Collins Street, and there separated and went east and west, the daughter to have her Cup dresses tried on at one end of that thoroughfare, and the father to resume command of his commercial kingdom at the other.
He had not been in his office many minutes before he sent for Joseph Liddon. When the young man appeared, neat and spruce, as became a clerk of the great house, Mr. Churchill held out the Argus, folded, and pointed to the advertisement of the tea-room.
"I wanted to ask you, Liddon, if this is your mother?" he said, in his quick, business way.
Joey did not need to look, but dropped his eyes to the paper, and crimsoned to the roots of his hair. For a dreadful moment he was in danger of saying, "No, sir," but was mercifully spared from the perpetration of what would have been to him and his a most disastrous lie. Then he was on the point of saying he didn't know, but had the sense to perceive that such an evasion would but make the inevitable disclosure worse; and finally braced himself to the agony of confession. He had implored the relentless Jenny not to allow their name to appear in connection with her undertaking, and lo, here it was, published to the world of supercilious fellow-clerks and magnificent proprietors. He was ready to sink into the ground with shame.