Miss Jessie said that she should be very pleased to come; but she did not look pleased, and for the matter of that I fear neither did I. I could not think why father should want Mr. Hoad's company again so soon; but I supposed it must be about that letter of Frank's. He had evidently seemed annoyed about it, although I did not know at that time why it was.
I took Jessie Hoad into the parlor while the two men went into the business-room. Mother was rather flurried when I announced, in my blunt way, that these visitors were going to stay to tea. The presence of a strange woman always did trouble mother a bit, and Jessie having been the head of her father's house since her mother died, she considered her in the light of a housewife. I knew that she was longing to have her best china out and the holland covers off in the front parlor. She was far too hospitable, however, to allow this feeling to be apparent, and she rose at once to welcome her guest.
"I'm very pleased to see you, Miss Hoad," said she; "I'm sorry Joyce is away."
"Oh, not at all; pray don't mention it, Mrs. Maliphant," declared Jessie, in her hard, high voice, sitting down and settling her dress to advantage. "Of course I'm sorry to miss Joyce, but I'm very glad to see you and Margaret."
My blood boiled to hear her call us like that by our Christian names, and to see the way she sat there with her little smart hat and her little nose turned up in the air, chatting away to mother in a patronizing kind of way, and keeping the talk quite in her own hands with all the town news she had to tell.
"Yes, the Thornes' is a beautiful house," she was saying, "all in the best style, and quite regardless of expense. I assure you the dessert service was all gold and silver the other night when father and I dined there. Of course it was a grand affair. All the county swells there. But the thing couldn't have been done better in London, I declare."
"Indeed!" answered mother. "I haven't much knowledge of London."
"No, of course not," said Jessie. "But you have seen the Thornes' house, I suppose?"
"No," answered mother. "We don't go there. My husband and Mr. Thorne don't hold together."
"Oh, indeed!" exclaimed Jessie; "that's a pity. He and his daughter are the nicest people in the county. But as I was saying to Mary Thorne, there's something very quaint in your old house, and I can't help fancying the new style does copy some things from the old houses."