“Why should I want you or anybody?” she answered, determined to misunderstand him, and to be like her usual self in spite of the distress and excitement that she felt; “I’m well able to look after myself, though you mightn’t think it, and I don’t want anything this minute, only my tea, and Norry’s as cross as the cats, and I know she won’t have the cake made!” She tried to laugh, but the laugh faltered away into tears. She turned her head aside, and putting one hand to her eyes, felt with the other in her pocket for her handkerchief. It was underneath Hawkins’ letter, and as she snatched it out, it carried the letter along with it.
Christopher had started up, unable to bear the sight of her tears, and as he stood there, hesitating on the verge of catching her in his arms, he saw the envelope slip down on to the floor. As it fell the photograph slid out of its worn covering, and lay face uppermost at his feet. He picked it up, and having placed it with the letter on the sofa beside Francie, he walked to the window and looked sightlessly out into the garden. A heavily-laden tray bumped against the door, the handle turned, and Louisa, having pushed the door open with her knee, staggered in with the tea-tray. She had placed it on the table and was back again in the kitchen, talking over the situation with Bid Sal, before Christopher spoke.
“I’m afraid I can’t stay any longer,” he said, in a voice that was at once quieter and rougher than its wont; “you must forgive me if anything that I said has—has hurt you—I didn’t mean it to hurt you.” He stopped short and walked towards the door. As he opened it, he looked back at her for an instant, but he did not speak again.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The kitchen at Tally Ho generally looked its best at ten o’clock in the morning. Its best is, in this case, a relative term, implying the temporary concealment of the plates, loaves of bread, dirty rubbers, and jam-pots full of congealed dripping that usually adorned the tables, and the sweeping of out-lying potato-skins and cinders into a chasm beneath the disused hothearth. When these things had been done, and Bid Sal and her bare feet had been effaced into some outer purlieu, Norry felt that she was ready to receive the Queen of England if necessary, and awaited the ordering of dinner with her dress let down to its full length, a passably clean apron, and an expression of severe and exalted resignation. On the morning now in question Charlotte was standing in her usual position, with her back to the fire and her hands spread behind her to the warmth, scanning with a general’s eye the routed remnants of yesterday’s dinner, and debating with herself as to the banner under which they should next be rallied.
“A curry, I think, Norry,” she called out; “plenty of onions and apples in it, and that’s all ye want.”
“Oh, musha! God knows ye have her sickened with yer curries,” replied Norry’s voice from the larder, “’twas ere yestherday ye had the remains of th’ Irish stew in curry, an’ she didn’t ate what’d blind your eye of it. Wasn’t Louisa tellin’ me!”
“And so I’m to order me dinners to please Miss Francie!” said Charlotte, in tones of surprising toleration; “well, ye can make a haricot of it if ye like. Perhaps her ladyship will eat that.”
“Faith ’tis aiqual to me what she ates—” here came a clatter of crockery, and a cat shot like a comet from the larder door, followed by Norry’s foot and Norry’s blasphemy—“or if she never ate another bit. And where’s the carrots to make a haricot? Bid Sal’s afther tellin’ me there’s ne’er a one in the garden; but sure, if ye sent Bid Sal to look for salt wather in the say she wouldn’t find it!”
Miss Mullen laughed approvingly. “There’s carrots in plenty; and see here, Norry, you might give her a jam dumpling—use the gooseberry jam that’s going bad. I’ve noticed meself that the child isn’t eating, and it won’t do to have the people saying we’re starving her.”