“Brought you some hot water”—in a meek and muffled voice. “Dinner is—(Put those down, Cariad! He knows people’s slippers aren’t for him to eat!) Dinner is at eight. I’m not supposed to come down.”
Here the huge brown eyes turned ruefully for a moment from me to the gleaming sheath of the new frock that I’d just thrown over the brass rail of the bed. I guessed the thought behind them. They longed for another satisfying stare at it—on me.
Why shouldn’t I have this child fond of me?
“Shall I say good-night now, then, Theo?” I suggested. “Or—if you tell me which your room is, shall I come in after I’m dressed?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Theo, bell-mouthed. “Gem!” Then, carefully muffling the voice again, “That’s the school-room door opposite—between the corridor window and the picture of ‘Delia in Arcady.’ Thanks awf’ly, Nancy. (Come along, Cariad!)”
Not every engaged girl has such a walk-over with “his” people! But I think Theo would approve of me as a sister-in-law, if she were going to have the chance! I shouldn’t mind her!... On second thoughts, I don’t know whether I am so pleased after all that these people are so kind and welcoming and different from what I had expected.
Wouldn’t it be almost easier for me in some ways if his mother and his sisters were the “collection of frosty-faces” (as Miss Robinson expresses it) whom I’d anticipated meeting? I was prepared; I could have coped with them. Why has he got sisters like these—just the kind of girls I could imagine sisters of mine?
Why must his mother be so sweet to me, without a gleam of the “designing-little-minx-of-a-typist” look in her eyes, without—I verily believe—a thought of it in her heart? Ready to take to her arms the stranger within her gates whom she looks upon as her son’s lady-love—oh, it’s too embarrassing!
For the first time since this sham engagement was arranged between my employer and myself, I feel what I did not feel when I confronted my fellow-typists, the Vandeleurs or Cicely with the news that I was Mr. Waters’ fiancée; what I did not feel when I first slipped these lying diamonds on to my finger; what I didn’t feel when I cabled that money to Jack, or even when I wrote to Sydney.
I feel—there is no other word to express it—downright mean!