Five.
“Now, George!” came Janet’s voice, more firmly than before. After all, she meant in the end to be obeyed. She was learning her business as aunt to this new and difficult nephew; but learn it she would, and thoroughly!
“Come on!” Edwin counselled the boy.
They went together to the house. Maggie had found Janet, and the two were conversing. Soon afterwards aunt and nephew departed.
“How very odd!” murmured Maggie, with an unusual intonation, in the hall, as Edwin was putting on his hat to return to the shop. But whether she was speaking to herself or to him, he knew not.
“What?” he asked gruffly.
“Well,” she said, “isn’t it?”
She was more like Auntie Hamps, more like Clara, than herself in that moment. He resented the suspicious implications of her tone. He was about to give her one of his rude, curt rejoinders, but happily he remembered in time that scarce half an hour earlier he had turned over a new leaf; so he kept silence. He walked down to the shop in a deep dream.