“Thee must rest here before dinner,” said she, smoothing with a tiny hand the crocheted bedspread. “Ring this bell if there is anything thee wants. Shall I send Mr. Byrd up to thee?”
“Indeed, I'm not a bit tired,” said Mary, who had never felt better.
“All the same I would rest a little if I were thee,” Mrs. Farraday nodded wisely. Mary was fascinated by her grammar, never having met a Quaker before. The little lady, who barely reached her guest's shoulder, had such an air of mingled sweetness and dignity as to make Mary feel she must instinctively yield to her slightest wish. Obediently she lay down, and Mrs. Farraday covered her feet.
Mary noticed her fine white skin, soft as a baby's, the thousand tiny lines round her gentle eyes, her simple dress of brown silk with a cameo at the neck, her little, blue-veined hands. No wonder the son of such a woman impressed one with his extraordinary kindliness.
The little lady slipped away, and Mary, feeling unexpected pleasure in the quiet room and the soft bed, closed her eyes gratefully.
At luncheon, or rather dinner, for it was obvious that Mrs. Farraday kept to the old custom of Sunday meals, a silent, shock-headed boy of about ten appeared, whom McEwan with touching pride introduced as his son. He was dressed in a kilt and small deerskin sporran, with the regulation heavy stockings, tweed jacket and Eton collar.
“For Sundays only—we have to be Yankees on school days, eh, Jamie?” explained his father. The boy grinned in speechless assent, instantly looking a duplicate of McEwan.
Mary's heart warmed to him at once, he was so shy and clumsy; but Stefan, who detested the mere suspicion of loutishness, favored him with an absent-minded stare. Mary, who sat on Farraday's right, had the boy next her, with his father beyond, Stefan being between Mrs. Farraday and Constance. The meal was served by a gray-haired negro, of manners so perfect as to suggest the ideal southern servant, already familiar to Mary in American fiction. As if in answer to a cue, Mrs. Farraday explained across the table that Moses and his wife had come from Philadelphia with her on her marriage, and had been born in the South before the war. Mary's literary sense of fitness was completely satisfied by this remark, which was received by Moses with a smile of gentle pride.
“James,” said Constance, “I never get tired of your mother's house; it is so wonderful to have not one thing out of key.”
Farraday smiled. “Bless you, she wouldn't change a footstool. It is all just as when she married, and much of it, at that, belonged to her mother.”