“Who’d throw her out?”
“I know that meself.” Norry turned away and banged open the door of the oven. “There’s plinty that’s ready to pull the bed from undher a lone woman if they’re lookin’ for it for theirselves.”
The mixture had by this time been poured into its tin shape, and, having placed it in the oven, Francie seated herself on the kitchen table to superintend its baking. The voice of conscience told her to go back to the dining-room and finish her letter, but she repressed it, and, picking up a kitten that had lurked, unsuspected, between a frying-pan and the wall during the rout of its relatives, she proceeded to while away the time by tormenting it, and insulting the cockatoo with frivolous questions.
Miss Mullen’s weekly haggle with the butcher did not last quite as long as usual this Friday morning. She had, in fact, concluded it by herself taking the butcher’s knife, and, with jocose determination, had proceeded to cut off the special portion of the “rack” which she wished for, in spite of Mr. Driscoll’s protestations that it had been bespoke by Mrs. Gascogne. Exhilarated by this success, she walked home at a brisk pace, regardless of the heat, and of the weight of the rusty black tourists’ bag which she always wore, slung across her shoulders by a strap, on her expeditions into the town. There was no one to be seen in the house when she came into it, except the exiled cats, who were sleeping moodily in a patch of sunshine on the hall-mat, and after some passing endearments, their mistress went on into the dining-room, in which, by preference, as well as for economy, she sat in the mornings. It had, at all events, one advantage over the drawing-room, in possessing a sunny French window, opening on to the little grass-garden—a few untidy flower-beds, with a high, unclipped hedge surrounding them, the resort of cats and their breakfast dishes, but for all that a pleasant outlook on a hot day. Francie had been writing at the dinner-table, and Charlotte sat down in the chair that her cousin had vacated, and began to add up the expenses of the morning. When she had finished, she opened the blotter to dry her figures, and saw, lying in it, the letter that Francie had begun.
In the matter of reading a letter not intended for her eye, Miss Mullen recognised only her own inclinations, and the facilities afforded to her by fate, and in this instance one played into the hands of the other. She read the letter through quickly, her mouth set at its grimmest expression of attention, and replaced it carefully in the blotting-case where she found it. She sat still, her two fists clenched on the table before her, and her face rather redder than even the hot walk from Lismoyle had made it.
There had been a good deal of information in the letter that was new to her, and it seemed important enough to demand much consideration. The reflection on her own contribution to the bazaar did not hurt her in the least, in fact it slightly raised her opinion of Francie that she should have noticed it; but that ingenuous confidence about the evening spent in the gallery was another affair. At this point in her reflections, she became aware that her eye was attracted by something glittering on the green baize of the dinner-table, half-hidden under two or three loose sheets of paper. It was the bangle that she remembered having seen on Francie’s wrist, and she took it up and looked curiously at the double horse-shoes as she appraised its value. She never thought of it as being real—Francie was not at all above an effective imitation—and she glanced inside to see what the mark might be. There was the eighteen-carat mark sure enough, and there also was Francie’s name and the date, July 1st, 189—. A moment’s reflection enabled Charlotte to identify this as the day of the yacht accident, and another moment sufficed for her to determine that the giver of the bangle had been Mr. Hawkins. She was only too sure that it had not been Christopher, and certainly no glimmer of suspicion crossed her mind that the first spendings from her loan to Mr. Lambert were represented by the bangle.
She opened the blotter, and read again that part of the letter that treated of Christopher Dysart. “P’yah!” she said to herself, “the little fool! what does she know about him?” At this juncture, the wheezing of the spring of the passage-door gave kindly signal of danger, and Charlotte deftly slipped the letter back into the blotter, replaced the bangle under the sheets of paper, and was standing outside the French window when Francie came into the room, with flushed cheeks, a dirty white apron, and in her hands a plate bearing a sponge-cake of the most approved shade of golden-brown. At sight of Charlotte she stopped guiltily, and, as the latter stepped in at the window, she became even redder than the fire had made her.
“Oh—I’ve just made this, Charlotte—” she faltered; “I bought the eggs and the butter myself; I sent Bid for them, and Norry said—she thought you wouldn’t mind—”
On an ordinary occasion Charlotte might have minded considerably even so small a thing as the heating of the oven and the amount of flour and sugar needed for the construction of the cake; but a slight, a very slight sense of wrong-doing, conspired with a little confusion, consequent on the narrowness of her escape, to dispose her to compliance.
“Why, me dear child, why would I mind anything so agreeable to me and all concerned as that splendour of a cake that I see there? I declare I never gave you credit for being able to do anything half as useful! ’Pon me honour, I’ll give a tea-party on the strength of it.” Even as she spoke she had elaborated the details of a scheme of which the motor should be the cake that Francie’s own hand had constructed.