"I haven't been 'calling,'" replied the butler, "except only just now—just this minute." He spoke as though he was being scolded for not answering a bell. But he cast an admiring glance, half wild, half reckless, at the cook.
"An' you shouting to me to come this last 'arf hour and more!" cried
Mrs. Horton. She, too, apparently, was in a "state."
"You are mistaken, Bridget, I have been singing, as I often do when attending to the silver, but as for—"
"You can do without a hat," she interrupted. "Come on! I want to go and look for—for—" She broke off, taking his arm as though they were going down the Strand or Oxford Street. Her red face beamed. She looked very proud and happy. She wanted to look for something too, but she could not believe the moment had really come. She had put it away so long—like a special dish in a cupboard.
"I don't know what's come over me," she went on very confidentially, as she moved beside him through the scullery door, "but—but I don't feel satisfied—not satisfied with meself as I used to be."
"No, Bridget?" It was in his best "7:30" manner. There was a struggle in him.
"No," said Mrs. Horton, with decision. "I give satisfaction—that I know—"
"We both do that," said Thompson proudly. "And no one can do a suet pudding to a turn as you can. Only the other day I heard Sir William a-speaking of it—"
She held his arm more tightly. They were on the lawn by now. The flood of sunlight caught them, showed up the worn and shabby places in his suit of broadcloth, gleamed on her bursting shoes she "fancied" for her kitchen work. They heard the birds, they smelt the flowers, the air bathed them all over like a sea.
"And the silver, Alfred," she said in a lower tone. "Who in the world can make it look as you do? But what I've been feeling lately—since this morning, that is to say—and feeling for the first time in me life, so to speak—"