Which rumour was to cause Miss Esther Worthing a great deal of future annoyance. At present she had only room for one supremely outraged sentiment: that it was not county etiquette to cast your second wife upon the bosom of your deceased first wife’s sister.
“Cook’s lying in a scarlet sleep under the kitchen dresser,” Peter indiscreetly announced, having been in quest of more glasses. “That’s why she didn’t open to them.”
“Oh, dear me, how very tiresome; I hope you hadn’t to wait long.” Admirably the mistress of the house rose to the occasion, to the traditions of caste, and to the height of her linen collars. “But anybody who knows anything about servants will know also what a problem it is,” this to Chavvy, by way of a suitable conversational opening. Peter, her aunt noticed with satisfaction, was for the moment concentrating attention on the Lorrimers.
Chavvy laughed with birdlike gaiety: “Why, I’ve knocked about as long as I can remember in ‘digs.’; and jolly well waited on myself, unless I could afford to tip the slavey. You mustn’t ask me about servants.”
“Are you on the stage, Mrs.—er——?” threw in Myrtle Lorrimer. “How sweet! I once took part in a Greek tableau, and wore sandals and filleted hair.”
“Sure you don’t mean filleted plaice?” interrupted her father, whom Thatch Lane had encouraged as a wit.
“Don’t be silly, father,” pettishly.
“And don’t you be pert, young lady.”
Bertram watched the pair closely and made a few mental notes on the art of being a father, an accomplishment wherein he was liable to grow rusty during his long intervals of absence from Peter. Miss Esther was still dutifully laughing at Mr. Lorrimer’s joke; and Chavvy, more at home now the talk had swung nearer her zone of comprehension, replied eagerly to Myrtle:
“Yes, just think, I played my first part when I was only nine: Wally, in ‘Two little Vagabonds.’ And I used to cry my heart out every night in the consumptive bit at the end—have you seen it?—where he says: ‘Don’t forget Wally, who was your little son for ... for a week!’”