"Eh, my dear? Eh?"
"Couldn't we be friends? Won't you tell me when you are in trouble? I might not be able to do anything, but still—Something is worrying you now, isn't it? Do you mind my asking?"
The Colonel jerked his arm away from hers, not unkindly, but as if from an irresistible impulse. "Nonsense! Rubbish, my dear!" he said loudly. "Pray don't talk such nonsense."
"Is it nonsense?" Dorothea showed no sign of affront. It was not her way to be easily affronted. Standing so near to the Colonel, she was in a favourable position to examine him well with her shortsighted eyes, which were keen enough within a limited range; and she used the opportunity. "But something has happened,—I am sure of it," she said, recalling the distress of that big noisy sigh. "Are you—is it that you are not well?"
Colonel Tracy snatched at the suggestion with relief.
"Indigestion, my dear; indigestion the whole afternoon. Miserably cooked dinner to-day. You must have seen,—but women have no sense of taste—no sense of taste whatever. That creature knows no more how to make a sauce than—Why, it wasn't sauce!" pursued the Colonel, with lively disgust. "Sauce! It was liquid paste,—flour and water,—anything you like, except what it was called! And the beef—all the goodness drained out of it. Nothing left but rags. Pastry, enough to make anybody ill,—mere dough, nothing but dough. Can't think what Mrs. Stirring is about. If she doesn't look sharp, I'll move elsewhere. Arrant carelessness!"
This was hard, and Dorothea knew it. Mrs. Stirring might be slow, and not very brilliant, but her mistakes did not arise from carelessness. She was always painstaking, only sometimes rather dull. Remonstrance would have been useless, however.
"And nothing else is wrong except dinner?" said Dorothea. "Nothing of importance?"
"My dear, I hope that is of importance," said the Colonel grimly.
Dorothea was not satisfied. That an ill-cooked dinner—even if it had been ill-cooked, which was not strictly the case—could cause such a sigh as she had overheard, seemed to her young mind an impossibility. Questioning was not at an end yet, the Colonel knew. Perhaps he had never in his life before been glad of a caller.