He was still “resting and cooling” when Mrs. Osborne came bustling out of the house, also very hot, and kissed her husband loudly first on one cheek and then on the other.
“Well, and that’s right, my dear,” she said, “and it’s good to see you. But you are hot, Eddie, and is it wise for you to sit out o’ doors in the shadow without a wrap? You were always prone to take a chill.”
“I should be prone to take an apoplexy if I put anything else on, Mrs. O.,” remarked he. “But my! it’s a relief to get down into the country again. Not but what things haven’t gone very well this last week for me in the House. Commission on Housing of Employees! I had a good bit to tell them about that, and I warrant you they listened. Lor’, my dear, they like a plain man as’ll talk common sense to them, and tell ’em what he’s seen and what he knows, instead of argufying about procedure. I knew my figures, my dear, and my cubic feet per room, and my statistics about the health of my workmen and their death-rate. I’ve been a common man, myself, my dear, and I told them so, and told them what things was when I was a lad.”
Mrs. Osborne was slightly aghast.
“Oh! Eddie, I doubt that’ll tell against you,” she said.
“Not a bit of it, old lady. Everyone knew it to begin with, else I don’t say I should have told them. And equally they know that they come and dance at No. 92 when Mrs. O. invites them. Glad they are to come, too, and my dinner table is good enough for anybody to put his legs under. But all that’s over for the present, and I didn’t come away for my holiday, which I’ve deserved, to talk more politics; I came away to enjoy myself, and have a breath of country air. Eh! it’s a pretty little box this. I wish I could have bought it. I should have liked to leave a country seat for Per and Mrs. after you and me was dead and buried.”
This turn in the conversation was not quite to Mrs. Osborne’s taste.
“Don’t talk so light about dying, Mr. Osborne,” she said, “because you give me the creeps and the shivers for all it’s so hot. There’s a host of things too I want to talk to you about before the company comes, without thinking of buryings. There’s the two pictures of you and me arrived, and it would be a good thing if you’d cast your eye over the walls, and see where you’d like them hung, and we’d get them up at once. They’re a fine pair, they are, and the frames too, remarkably handsome.”
“Well, you want a handsome frame for a handsome bit of painting,” said her husband, “and finer works I’ve seldom seen. They was cheap at the price. Give me a cup of tea, Mrs. O., and we’ll go and have a squint at ’em. What else, my dear?”
Mrs. Osborne poured him out a cup of tea as she knew he liked it, extremely strong. She put in the cream first and stirred it up before handing to him.