“Miss Charlotte bid me give ye a bate egg with a half glass of whisky in it whenever ye’d come downstairs.” She stirred it with a black kitchen fork, and proffered the sticky tumbler to Francie, who took it, and swallowed the thin, flat liquid which it contained with a shudder of loathing. “How bad y’are! Dhrink every dhrop of it now! An empty sack won’t stand, and ye’re as white as a masheroon this minute. God knows it’s in yer bed ye should be, and not shtuck out in a chair in the middle of the flure readin’ the paper!” Her eye fell on the apparently unconscious Mrs. and Miss Bruff. “Ha, ha! thin! how cosy the two of yez is on yer sofa! Walk out, me Lady Ann!”
This courtesy-title, the expression of Norry’s supremest contempt and triumph, was accompanied by a sudden onslaught with the hearth-brush, but long before it could reach them, the ladies referred to had left the room by the open window.
The room was very quiet after Norry had gone away. Francie took the evicted holding of the cats, and fell speedily into a doze induced by the unwonted half glass of whisky. Her early dinner, an unappetising meal of boiled mutton and rice pudding, was but a short interlude in the dulness of the morning; and after it was eaten, a burning tract of afternoon extended itself between her and Mr. Dysart’s promised visit. She looked out of the window at the sailing shreds of white cloud high up in the deep blue of the sky, at the fat bees swinging and droning in the purple blossoms of the columbine border, at two kittens playing furiously in the depths of the mignonette bed; and regardless of Charlotte’s injunctions about the heat of the sun, she said to herself that she would go out into the garden for a little. It was three o’clock, and her room was as hot as an oven when she went up to get her hat; her head ached as she stood before the glass and arranged the wide brim to her satisfaction, and stuck her best paste pin into the sailor’s knot of her tie. Suddenly the door burst unceremoniously open, and Norry’s grey head and filthy face were thrust round the edge of it.
“Come down, Miss Francie!” she said in a fierce whisper; “give over making shnouts at yerself in the glass and hurry on down! Louisa isn’t in, and sure I can’t open the doore the figure I am.”
“Who’s there?” asked Francie, with flushing cheeks.
“How would I know? I’d say ’twas Misther Lambert’s knock whatever. Sich galloppin’ in and out of the house as there is these two days! Ye may let in this one yerself!”
When Francie opened the hall-door she was both relieved and disappointed to find that Norry had been right in the matter of the knock. Mr. Lambert was apparently more taken by surprise than she was. He did not speak at once, but, taking her hand, pressed it very hard, and when Francie, finding the silence slightly embarrassing, looked up at him with a laugh that was intended to simplify the situation, she was both amazed and frightened to see a moisture suspiciously like tears in his eyes.
“You—you look rather washed out,” he stammered.
“You’re very polite! Is that all you have to say to me?” she said, slipping her hand out of his, and gaily ignoring his tragic tone. “You and your old yacht nearly washed me out altogether! At all events, you washed the colour out of me pretty well.” She put up her hands and rubbed her cheeks. “Are you coming in or going out? Charlotte’s lunching at the Bakers’, and I’m going into the garden till tea-time, so now you can do as you like.”
“I’ll come into the garden with you,” he said, stepping aside to let her pass out. “But are you sure your head is well enough for you to go out in this sun?”