"I'm so awfully hungry, mother. Almost starved."
"Starved! After all that lot! And only two hours and a half since breakfast. Why, you're talking nonsense, don't you know? You'll got so fat, Dicky, you won't be able to walk, and we shall have to get a pulley to carry you. I don't know what boys are made of—I really don't! I know what they like to be made of, and that's plum-cake!"—in a sotto voce aside.
"I declare, here comes Mabel—Miss Ingram, I mean—" for the caller was not "Mabel" to small Dicky. "Well, well, just one more slice, and mind you don't say a single word to the others, or I shall have them all down upon me, plump; and there won't be a scrap left. Get along with you, Dicky, and be a good boy. Well, Mabel, my dear, how are you? Quite well? Sit down and tell me all about everything. Poor dear—"
"I can't really, Mrs. Kennedy—"
"Poor dear Thomas always forgets half that he hears, don't you know? Can't!—But you must! Now do tell me, how is that poor young thing? It's perfectly dreadful, isn't it? I couldn't get off to sleep last night for I don't know how long, thinking about her all alone in that huge house, and what in the world she's to do, you know. Have a piece of cake, Mabel? No? It's very nice cake—made from a receipt of my mother's; something quite uncommon. Well, if you won't—! But that poor young widow, left all alone, and such a big property on her hands. Of course one always expected her to be a widow pretty early, in the nature of things. It couldn't help being so. If people will go and marry an old man, fit to be their grandfather—But then one doesn't expect it to be so awfully sudden: and not an atom of warning. Such a way to lose him too! Sit down, Mabel!"
"I can't really. I've come with a message to Mr. Kennedy: and I'm to wait for a verbal answer."
"Oh, well, Thomas is out now, but he'll be in this minute. You may as well sit down. Now do tell me how that poor thing is this morning. I suppose your father is attending her still. Oh, of course I know he never tells you anything particular, and if he did you wouldn't tell it again. I know how particular your father is, and quite right of him too. I hate gossip, my dear. But still he might just have happened to say if she was better."
"My father has not been to the Park yet."
"Oh, then, of course—! However, I heard she went to the funeral, and looked so lovely in her weeds, and was as composed as anything. Thomas was there, of course; but he hasn't had a word with Mrs. Villiers yet. You see, it's a little awkward—the Park being just within Dulveriford Parish—and then we all know she only came to St. John's to please her husband. I suppose Mr. Trevelyan has been to the Park a lot this week. Quite natural too. Oh, it will be all the Trevelyans now, and nothing to do with St. John's. It was only the General kept her to that, don't you know—poor dear man! And of course, he wasn't musical. He knew the 'Old Hundredth' when he heard it, and he liked it played at a sort of 'Dead March in Saul' time, with all the little turns and twists of seventy years ago. Thomas sometimes begged the organist to put on a few of those twiddles, just by way of pleasing the poor dear General, and he did try, but he couldn't get them stately enough. The General always shook his head afterward, and said, 'Ah, it wasn't what it used to be.' Well, and I suppose Jean has been with Mrs. Villiers all the week too."
Mabel hesitated. "I don't think so—quite—from what I hear," she said. "My father says nothing, or Jean either. Jean is always so shut-up, you know—so unlike most girls. But I believe Mrs. Villiers only wants to be alone, and seems to turn from all sympathy—even Jean's. It seems odd; when Jean and Mr. Trevelyan have done so much for her."