“Nay, Temperance. Remember, she is a widow.”
“Small chance of my forgetting it. Doesn’t she tell me so six dozen times a day? Ask Faith to do any thing she loveth not, and she’s always a widow. I’ve had my thoughts whether I could not be an orphan when I’m wanted to do something disagreeable. What think you?”
“I think your bark is worse than your bite, Temperance,” said Edith, smiling.
“I’m about weary of barking,” answered Temperance, laying smooth a piece of cobweb lawn. “I think I’ll bite, one of these days. Deary me, but there are widows of divers sorts! If ever there were what Paul calls ‘a widow indeed,’ it is my Lady Lettice; and she doesn’t make a screen of it, as Faith does, against all the east winds that blow. Well, well! Give me that pin-case, Lettice, and the black girdle yonder; I lack somewhat to fill up this corner. What hour must we be at Selwick, Edith?”
“At five o’ the clock the horses are bidden.”
“Very good. You’ll bide to supper?”
“Nay, not without I can help you.”
“You’ll not help me without you’ll tell Faith she’s a snivelling lazy-bones, and that you’ll not, I know. Go and get your beauty-sleep—and comfort Lady Lettice all you can.”
When Edith had departed, and the packing was finished, the aunt and niece went down to supper. It consisted of Polony sausages, sweetmeats, and an egg-pie—a Lancashire dainty, which Rachel the cook occasionally sent up, for she was a native of that county. During the entire meal, Faith kept up a slow rain of lamentations, for her widowhood, the sad necessity of leaving her home, and the entire absence of sympathy which she experienced in all around her: till at last her sister inquired—
“Faith, will you have any more pie?”