Crosby recovers from this blow with difficulty.
‘At all events,’ says he, ‘I have heard through Wyndham that she desires privacy at present. No doubt when she feels equal to receiving visitors she will let us all know.’
‘No doubt,’ says Dominick, who has been studying Mr. Crosby closely, and with covert amusement.
‘I’ll ask Mr. Wyndham about her,’ says Susan. ‘I think she would be happier if she could tell about her sorrow. One should be roused from one’s griefs, father says. And even if out of mourning—I didn’t see any blue bow, Betty—still, I am sure she must be sad at heart.’
‘Well, consult your father about it,’ says Crosby, as a last resource. In spite of his affection for Wyndham, he has doubts about his tenant.
At this point Jane appears, bringing a tray, on which are cups and saucers, teapot and cream ewer, some bread-and-butter and sponge-cake. Susan had spent the morning making the sponge-cake on the chance of Mr. Crosby’s coming. They had decided in conclave that it would be better to have tea out here on the pleasant grass (though there is no table on which to put the tray) rather than in the small and rather stuffy drawing-room. They had had a distinct fight over it with Miss Barry; but Dominick, who can succeed in anything but his exams, overcame her, and carried the day.
‘Put the tray down here,’ says Betty, with quite an air, seeing that Susan has given way a little beneath the want of the table—‘down here on the grass near me. I’ll pour out the tea’—this with a withering glance at Susan, who is slightly flushed, and apparently ashamed of herself. ‘We haven’t any rustic table yet, Mr. Crosby,’ says Betty, with immense aplomb, ‘but were going to have one shortly’—this with all the admirable assurance of a fashionable dame who has just been ordering a garden tea-table from one of the best London houses. She nods and smiles at him. ‘Dom is going to make it. Susan’—with a freezing glance at that damsel—‘do you think you could manage to cut the sponge-cake?’
‘Cut it!’ says Jacky, who is sharp to see that the idolized Susan is being sat upon, and who still feels that he owes her reparation of some sort. ‘Why couldn’t she cut it? She made it.’
Susan bursts out laughing. It is too much, and they all follow suit.
‘What! you made it?’ cries Crosby, taking up a knife and beginning a vigorous attack upon it. ‘Why didn’t you make it bigger when you were about it? The fact that it is your handiwork has, judging by myself, made us all frightfully hungry. Thank Heaven, there is still bread-and-butter, or I don’t know what would become of us.’