Without looking up from the patch of carpet on which Missis’s little dog slumbered with his muzzle resting against my shoe, I could feel the change that came into my employer’s grey glance—the half-disconcerted “M’m. News to me, all this!” expression that just flicked across his face. His mother’s hand made a little movement towards mine—and for some reason I felt that she was a little sorry.... I was furious! Why on earth couldn’t this little he-gossip—though why they should understand by the word “gossip” an old woman, I never shall know—why couldn’t he allow these people to go on thinking that the typist her employer had chosen to honour had never been before inside any sort of house but one of a row of seventy or eighty, all with the same sort of pot-plants hiding what lay beyond the Nottingham lace curtained windows, with the same neat front door, and the same metaphorical wolf crouched grimly in front of it! Desperately I wished that something might suddenly deprive Major Montresor of the power of speech, only I suppose nothing ever could do that!
Evidently he wasn’t going to spare me anything. I was to stand full in the limelight of other days.
“Hope the new tenants will keep it up as they should, then, that’s all”—genially. “They took on the fishing with it, I suppose? ‘Everything went together.’ What? I see. Hope they’ll take as much pride as your poor father did in those magnificent hot-houses of his. Ah, I’ve never tasted peaches like those, anywhere else! Remember how you used to race me down to get the finest peach before breakfast, Monica? Yes, hang it all, I think I shall have to ask your leave to go on calling her that, Waters. Loved her from childhood’s hour, y’see. Her childhood’s, not mine, of course!”
“Oh,” murmured the Governor.
Miss Robinson would have been kept in high spirits for the next week by that “Oh.”
It didn’t amuse me much as I sat there, carrying out to the letter my promise to say nothing and look shy. I was feeling at least as embarrassed as I looked by the time tea was brought in and the girls made their appearance; Blanche with her fair hair unmanageably soft from its washing; Theo, as usual, all eyes for the visitor. I hoped they might distract his attention from me—they’re quite young enough!—but no! All the time he was sipping his tea and munching slice after slice of cake, the little Major continued to pour out comment after embarrassing comment upon my affairs, addressing himself chiefly now to the Governor.
He sat looking still more hopelessly uncomfortable and bigger than ever in contrast to the frail china tea-cup and the slice of wafer-like bread-and-butter in his clutch. Why do people allow men in at drawing-room teas? Why couldn’t those two have been having theirs in the billiard-room—the garage—anywhere—where I could have been saved from Major Montresor’s relentless flow of conversation?
“And to think I should have known you all these months without suspecting that your gain was to be my loss—no, no, I don’t mean the business part of it, my boy. I mean this engagement of yours, ha, ha! And then—funny thing! to be congratulating the wrong man.”
“Oh, were you?” burst suddenly, irrepressibly, from Theo, unable to check the following “Who?”
“Theo-dora, dear!”