"George Cannon could talk the hind leg off a horse," Mrs. Lessways continued quite happily. "And yet it isn't as if he said a great deal. He doesn't. I'll say this for him. He's always the gentleman. And I couldn't say as much for his sister being a lady, and I'm sorry for it. He's the most gentlemanly man in Turnhill, and always so spruce, too!"
"His sister?"
"Well, his half-sister, since you're so particular, Miss Precise!"
"Not Miss Gailey?" said Hilda, who began faintly to recall a forgotten fact of which she thought she had once been cognizant.
"Yes, Miss Gailey," Mrs. Lessways snapped, still very genial and content. "I did hear she's quarrelled out and out with him, too, at last!" She tightened her lips. "Draw the blind down."
Miss Gailey, a spinster of superior breeding and a teacher of dancing, had in the distant past been an intimate friend of Mrs. Lessways. The friendship was legendary in the house, and the grand quarrel which had finally put an end to it dated in Hilda's early memories like a historical event. For many years the two had not exchanged a word.
Mrs. Lessways lit the gas, and the china and the white cloth and the coloured fruit-jelly and the silver spoons caught the light and threw it off again, with gaiety.
"Has she swept the hearth? Yes, she has," said Mrs. Lessways, glancing round at the red fire.
Hilda sat down to wait, folding her hands as it were in meekness. In a few moments Florrie entered with the teapot and the hot-water jug. The child wore proudly a new white apron that was a little too long for her, and she smiled happily at Mrs. Lessways' brief compliment on her appearance and her briskness. She might have been in paradise.
"Come in for your cup in three minutes," said Mrs. Lessways; and to Hilda when Florrie had whispered and gone: "Now we shall see if she can make tea. I told her very particularly this morning, and she seems quick enough."