“Well, I took my time about calling on her,” observed Mrs. Baker; “I thought I’d let her see I was in no hurry.”
Mrs. Corkran, with whom Mrs. Baker was having tea, felt guiltily conscious of having called on Mrs. Lambert two days after her arrival, and hastened to remind the company of the pastoral nature of the attention.
“Oh, of course we know clergymen’s families can’t pick their company,” went on Mrs. Baker, dismissing the interruption not without a secret satisfaction that Carrie Beattie, who, in the absence of Miss Corkran, was pouring out tea for her future mother-in-law, should see that other people did not consider the Rev. Joseph such a catch as she did. “Only that Lambert’s such a friend of Mr. Baker’s, and always banked with him, I declare I don’t know that I’d have gone at all. I assure you it gave me quite a turn to see her stuck up there in poor Lucy Lambert’s chair, talking about the grand hotels that she was in, in London and Paris, as if she never swept out a room or cleaned a saucepan in her life.”
“She had all the walls done round with those penny fans,” struck in Miss Kathleen Baker, “and a box of French bongbongs out on the table; and oh, mamma! did you notice the big photograph of him and her together on the chimney-piece?”
“I could notice nothing, Kathleen, and I didn’t want to notice them,” replied Mrs. Baker; “I could think of nothing but of what poor Lucy Lambert would say to see her husband dancing attendance on that young hussy without so much as a mourning ring on him, and her best tea-service thrashed about as if it was kitchen delf.”
“Was he very devoted, Mrs. Baker?” asked Miss Beattie with a simper.
“Oh, I suppose he was,” answered Mrs. Baker, as if in contempt for any sentiment inspired by Francie, “but I can’t say I observed anything very particular.”
“Oh, then, I did!” said Miss Baker with a nod of superior intelligence; “I was watching them all the time; every word she uttered he was listening to it, and when she asked for the tea-cosy he flew for it!”
“Eliza Hackett told my Maria there was shocking waste going on in the house now; fires in the drawing-room from eight o’clock in the morning, and this the month of May!” said Mrs. Corkran with an approving eye at the cascade of cut paper that decked her own grate, “and the cold meat given to the boy that cleans the boots!”
“Roddy Lambert’ll be sorry for it some day when it’s too late,” said Mrs. Baker darkly, “but men are all alike; it’s out of sight out of mind with them!”