Mrs. Altham gave a little shrill laugh. The sprightliness at breakfast produced by this early walk and the exercises was very marked.
“I declare,” she said, “that I had forgotten to tell you. Mrs. Ames wrote to ask us both to dine on Saturday. I had quite forgotten! There is something in the air before breakfast that makes one forgetful of trifles. It says so in the pamphlet. Worries and household cares vanish, and it becomes a joy to be alive. I don’t think we have any engagement. Pray do not have a third cup of tea, Henry. Tannin combines the effects of stimulants and narcotics. A cup of hot water, now—you will never regret it. Let me see! Yes, dinner at the Ames’ on Saturday, and she isn’t a Suffragette any longer. As I said, one might have guessed. I daresay her husband gave her a good talking-to, after the night when she threw the water at the policeman. I should not wonder if there was madness in the family. I think I heard that Sir James’ mother was very queer before she died!”
“She lived till ninety,” remarked Mr. Altham.
“That is often the case with deranged people,” said Mrs. Altham. “Lunatics are notoriously long-lived. There is no strain on the brain.”
“And she wasn’t any relation of Mrs. Ames,” continued Henry. “Mrs. Ames is related to the Westbournes. She has no more to do with Sir James’ mother than I have to do with yours. I will take tea, my dear, not hot water.”
“You want to catch me up, Henry,” said she, “and prove I am wrong somehow. I was only saying that very likely there is madness in Mrs. Ames’ family, and I was going to add that I hoped it would not come out in her. But you must allow that she has been very flighty. You would have thought that an elderly woman like that could make up her mind once and for all about things, before she made an exhibition of herself. She thinks she is like some royal person who goes and opens a bazaar, and then has nothing more to do with it, but hurries away to Leeds or somewhere to unveil a memorial. She thinks it is sufficient for her to help at the beginning, and get all the advertisement, and then drop it all like cold potatoes.”
“Hot,” said Henry.
“Hot or cold: that is just like her. She plays hot and cold. One day she is a Suffragette and the next day she isn’t. As likely as not she will be a vegetarian on Saturday, and we shall be served with cabbages.”
“Major Ames went over to Sir James’ to shoot,—she wasn’t asked,” said Henry, reverting to a previous topic.
“There you are!” exclaimed Mrs. Altham. “That will account for her abandoning this husband and wife theory. I am sure she did not like that, she being Sir James’ relative and not being asked. But I never could quite understand what the relationship is, though I daresay Mrs. Ames can make it out. There are people who say they are cousins, because a grandmother’s niece married the other grandmother’s nephew. We can all be descendants of Queen Elizabeth or of Charles the Second at that rate.”