“You will possibly overcome their prejudices, and make them love you.”
“That is a charming answer,” Mrs Chadwick replied. “But I am not sure that their love would not prove equally embarrassing. I would prefer to win their regard.”
“It is merely another term for the same emotion,” Mrs Sommers insisted.
They were seated before the fire in Mrs Chadwick’s bedroom, having a last chat before retiring. Though women live together in the same house, and part, possibly for the first time for the day, outside their bedroom doors, a last chat is a privileged necessity—that is, when women are companions; when the last chat ceases to be a necessity it is a proof of mutual boredom. Mrs Chadwick and Belle Sommers were a long way off the point of boredom.
Belle had begun going to Mrs Chadwick’s bedroom in her capacity of pseudo hostess, thinking that possibly Mrs Chadwick, who had come without a maid in deference to a hint from her friend that strange servants would be unwelcome in Mr Musgrave’s household, might find herself at a loss. But Mrs Chadwick was seldom at a loss in the matter of helping herself; a maid was a luxury, not an essential, in her train of accessories. The pekinese alone was indispensable. She had conceded the point about the maid, but she had refused to be separated from the pekinese. It is conjectural whether Mr Musgrave did not object more to the pekinese than he would have to the maid; but Belle, like Mrs Chadwick, did not consider it wise to humour all his little prejudices.
“I think,” observed Mrs Chadwick, after a pause, during which they had both been gazing reflectively into the fire, “that I have settled everything that was immediately pressing, and can now relieve your brother of the strain of my presence. I cannot begin anything until we are established at the Hall.”
Mrs Sommers looked amused.
“I believe,” she said, “that John is frightening you away.”
“He is,” Mrs Chadwick admitted. “I am afraid of John. His inextinguishable courtesy chills me. How come you and John to be the children of the same parents? I don’t believe you are. I believe that John is a changeling.”
Belle laughed.