There was a knock at the door. It was Cousin Winnie.
“Your dinner!” she whispered. “It’s ready!”
Cousin Ronald did some quick reflecting himself. If the young man could observe their strict economy for himself—
“Mr. Ordway, sir,” he said, “will you favor us with your company at a very simple meal?”
“Thank you!” Ordway replied. “I’d be pleased to.[Pg 425]”
This dinner had, in Cousin Ronald’s eyes, a sweet, old-fashioned charm. A fire burned now upon the hearth; the board was set out with Wedgwood and with Sheffield plate. And Cousin Ronald positively recreated Mme. Van Der Dokjen, describing her just as she had been, here in this very room.
But Ordway was not moved. He did not give the Wedgwood or the plate anything like the attention he gave to the economical dinner, and the late Mme. Van Der Dokjen was, to him, of very inferior merit to the living Lucy. All the time Cousin Ronald discoursed, Ordway was thinking of Lucy, deprived of electricity and of all the other privileges she so richly deserved.
“It’s a darned shame!” he thought. “The old skinflint thinks more of that letter than he does of his own family. A darned shame!”
When the meal ended, Cousin Ronald suggested that Lucy sing, accompanying herself upon the spinet—an art she had recently acquired. He believed that this would soften the heart of the rapacious young man.
It did. It did, indeed. To the sweetly jangling spinet she sang some gentle old song. In firelight and candlelight—