'Oh! I'm all right, mother. How are you?'
I perceived instantly that she was more excited than my arrival ordinarily made her. There were tears in her smiling eyes, and she was as nervous as a young girl. She did indeed look remarkably young for a woman of forty-five, with twenty-five years of widowhood and a brief but too tempestuous married life behind her.
The thought flashed across my mind: 'By some means or other she has got wind of my engagement. But how?'
But I said nothing. I, too, was naturally rather nervous. Mothers are kittle cattle.
'I'll tell her at supper,' I decided.
And she hovered round me, like a sea-gull round a steamer, as I went upstairs.
There was a ring at the door. She flew, instead of letting the servant go. It was a porter with my bag.
Just as I was coming down-stairs again there was another ring at the door. And my mother appeared magically out of the kitchen, but I was beforehand with her, and with a laugh I insisted on opening the front door myself this time. A young woman stood on the step.
'Please, Mrs Dawson wants to know if Mrs Durance can kindly lend her half-a-dozen knives and forks?'
'Eh, with pleasure,' said my mother, behind me. 'Just wait a minute, Lucy. Come inside on the mat.'