Elsie went, envious of the new dress, and at the same time thinking mockingly of Mrs. Woolley’s mottled skin and the lines that ran from her heavy nostrils to her sagging chin. Dresses and jewellery ought to be for girls who were young and pretty, not married women, plain and stout, like Mrs. Woolley. When Elsie came down again the doctor had gone, and Mrs. Woolley was in high good humour.
“I’ll get some tulle to-morrow, Elsie, and we can freshen it up round the neck and sleeves. You’d better rip off all this old stuff. And look here—you’re handy with your fingers—you can take the lace off and put it on that old navy blouse of mine, that’s got no collar. You know the one I mean ... you can drape it a bit....”
Elsie assented rather sulkily.
“Doctor Woolley’s so generous,” said Mrs. Woolley complacently. “He’s for ever giving me things, me and the children. If you knew more of the world, Elsie, you’d realise how lucky a woman is when she gets a hubby like mine who’s never so much as looked at another woman since he married. Some men aren’t like that, I can tell you. The tales I could let out, if I cared to, that I’ve heard from some! But if Doctor Woolley’s manner sometimes puts ideas into people’s heads, why, they’ve only themselves to blame is what I always say. He wouldn’t give a thought to anyone but me, not really.”
She looked full at Elsie as she spoke, and Elsie stared back at her.
The girl was puzzled and angry, not feeling certain that she knew whether Mrs. Woolley really believed her own words, or was using them to convey an oblique warning.
“If she really imagines that, she must be a fool,” thought Elsie contemptuously, only to veer round uneasily a moment later to the conviction that Mrs. Woolley had been talking at her.
It was the latter unpleasant belief that prevailed, without possibility of mistake, in the course of the next few days. Whenever the doctor was in the house, Mrs. Woolley made a point of remaining at his side, and during the hours when he was in the surgery she kept Elsie employed with the children, every now and then coming to look in on her with excuses that were always transparently flimsy.
The tension in the atmosphere pervaded the whole house.
At last one afternoon, when Gladys and Sonnie were at school, and Mrs. Woolley in the drawing-room with an unexpected caller, Elsie and the doctor met upon the stairs.