As she shook hands and sat down she expanded easily into a facetious description of the difficulties of getting her old horse along the road from Gurthnamuckla, and by the time she had finished her story Hawkins’ complexion had regained its ordinary tone, and Francie had resumed the air of elegant nonchalance appropriate to the importance of the married state. Nothing, in fact, could have been more admirable than Miss Mullen’s manner. She praised Francie’s new chair covers and Indian tea; she complimented Mr. Hawkins on his new pony; even going so far as to reproach him for not having been out to Gurthnamuckla to see her, till Francie felt some pricks of conscience about the sceptical way that she and Lambert had laughed together over Charlotte’s amiability when she paid her first visit to them. She found inexpressible ease in the presence of a third person as capable as Charlotte of carrying on a conversation with the smallest possible assistance; sheltered by it she slowly recovered from her mental overthrow, and, furious as she was with Hawkins for his part in it, she was beginning to be able to patronise him again by the time that he got up to go away.
“Well, Francie, my dear child,” began Charlotte, as soon as the door had closed behind him, “I’ve scarcely had a word with you since you came home. You had such a reception the last day I was here that I had to content myself with talking to Mrs. Beattie, and hearing all about the price of underclothes. Indeed I had a good mind to tell her that only for your magnanimity she wouldn’t be having so much to say about Carrie’s trousseau!”
“Indeed she was welcome to him!” said Francie, putting her chin in the air, “that little wretch, indeed!”
It was one of the moments when she touched the extreme of satisfaction in being married, and in order to cover, for her own and Charlotte’s sake, the remembrance of that idiotic blush, she assumed a little extra bravado.
“Talking of your late admirers—” went on Charlotte, “for I hope for poor Roddy’s sake they’re not present ones—I never saw a young fellow so improved in his manners as Mr. Hawkins. There was a time I didn’t fancy him—as you may remember, though we’ve agreed to say nothing more about our old squabbles—but I think he’s chastened by adversity. That engagement, you know—” she paused, and cast a side-long, unobtrusive glance at Francie. “He’s not the first young man that’s been whipped in before marriage as well as after it, and I think the more he looks at it the less he likes it.”
“He’s been looking at it a long time now,” said Francie with a laugh that was intended to be careless, but into which a sneer made its way. “I wonder Roddy isn’t in,” she continued, changing the subject to one in which no pitfalls lurked; “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d gone to Gurthnamuckla to see you, Charlotte; he’s been saying ever since we came back he wanted to have a talk with you, but he’s been so busy he hadn’t a minute.”
“If I’m not greatly mistaken,” said Charlotte, standing up so as to be able to see out of the window, “here’s the man of the house himself. What horse is that he’s on?” her eyes taking in with unwilling admiration the swaggering ease of seat and squareness of shoulder that had so often captivated her taste, as Lambert, not unaware of spectators at the window, overcame much callow remonstrance on the part of the young horse he was riding, at being asked to stand at the door till a boy came round to take him.
“Oh, that’s the new four-year-old that Roddy had taken in off Gurthnamuckla while we were away,” said Francie, leaning her elbow against the shutter and looking out too. “He’s an awful wild young brat of a thing! Look at the way he’s hoisting now! Roddy says he’ll have me up on him before the summer’s out, but I tell him that if he does I won’t be on him long.” Her eyes met her husband’s, and she laughed and tapped on the glass, beckoning imperiously to him to come in.
Charlotte turned away from the window, and when, a few minutes afterwards, Mr. Lambert came into the room, the visitor had put her gloves on, and was making her farewells to her hostess.
“No, Roddy,” she said, “I must be off now. I’m like the beggars, ‘tay and turn out’ is my motto. But supposing now that you bring this young lady over to lunch with me to-morrow—no, not to-morrow, that’s Sunday—come on Monday. How would that suit your book?”