'Now, then,' says Mrs. Naldret, rising from before the fire, 'go and wash your eyes with cold water, my dear. Go into George's room. Lord forgive me!' she soliloquises when Bessie has gone, 'I'd give my fingers for George not to go. But what's the use of fretting and worriting one's life away now that he's made up his mind? I shall be glad when they are married, though I doubt she doesn't love George as well as George loves her. But it'll come; it'll come. Times are different now to what they were, and girls are different. A little more fond of dress and pleasure and fine ways. She was very tender just now--she feels it now that George is really going. It would be better for her if he was to stay; but George is right about the times being hard. Ah, well! it ain't many of us as gets our bread well buttered in this part of the world! But there! I've tasted sweet bread without a bit of butter on it many and many a time!'
[YOU WORE ROSES THEN, MOTHER.]
Having made this reflection, Mrs. Naldret thinks of her husband again, and wonders what makes him so late to-night. But in a few moments she hears a stamping in the passage. 'That's Jim,' she thinks, with a light in her eyes. A rough comely man; with no hair on his face but a bit of English whisker of a light sandy colour in keeping with his skin, which is of a light sandy colour also. Head well shaped, slightly bald, especially on one side, where the hair has been worn away by the friction of his two-foot rule. When Jim Naldret makes a purse of his lips, and rubs the side of his head with his rule, his mates know that he is in earnest. And he is very often in earnest.
'It's mortal cold, mother,' he says almost before he enters.
'There's a nice fire, father,' replies Mrs. Naldret cheerfully; 'that'll soon warm you.'
'I don't know about that,' he returns, with the handle of the door in his hand. 'Now look here,--did you ever see such a door as this? Opens bang into the passage.'
'You're always grumbling about the door, father.'
'Well, if I like it, it doesn't do any one any harm, does it? The architect was a born fool, that's what he was.'
To support his assertion that the architect was a born fool, Jim Naldret thinks it necessary to make a martyr of himself; so he stands in the draught, and shivers demonstratively as the cold wind blows upon him.
'Never mind the door, Jim,' says Mrs. Naldret coaxingly. 'Come and wash your hands.'