CHAPTER VIII—THE WAY OF ALL FLESH
For good luck’s sake smile, Ruthita,” said my grandmother. “There you’ve sat all through breakfast lookin’ like a week o’ Sundays, with your face as long as a yard o’ pump water. What’s the matter with you, child? Ain’t you well?”
I saw the brightness come into Ruthita’s eyes and the lashes tremble. I knew by the signs that directly she heard her own voice she would begin to cry, so I answered for her.
“I can tell you what’s the matter. I upset her last night. It was nearly twelve when I got home from my walk with Mrs. Carpenter. Ruthie’d got herself all worked up. Thought we’d been getting drowned again or something, didn’t you, Ruthie? It was too bad of me to keep her sitting up so late.”
A heavy silence fell. Ruthita dropped her eyes, trying to recover her composure. My grandmother’s face masked itself in a non-committal stare. She gazed past me out of the window, and seemed to hold her breath; only the faint tinkling of the gold chain against the jet of her bodice, told how her breath came and went. She had placed her hand on the coffee-pot as I began to speak. When I ended, it stayed there motionless. From the bake-house across the courtyard came the bump, bang, bump of the bakers pounding the dough into bread.
“So you stayed out with Mrs. Carpenter till nearly twelve?”
My grandmother never used dialect when she wished to be impressive. Her tones were icily refined and haughty—
I recognized them as belonging to her company manners. She could be crushingly aloof and dignified when her sense of the moralities was offended. She had practised her talent for “settin’ folks down and makin’ ’em feel like three penn’orth o’ happence” to some purpose on grizzled sea-captains.
“Yes, till nearly twelve. It was pretty late, wasn’t it? We met some interesting people camping on the marshlands—old friends of mine and Ruthita’s.”
“Indeed! And you walked back from the Broads about midnight with a married woman.”