Mrs. Baker instantly apprehended Mrs. Johnson’s sympathetic intentions towards Letty and Sebastian, and with great alacrity went to the door.
“Come on, Jinny, dear; how’s your mother, this sudden cold snap? ... ah, bless them ... sweet things ... young things ...” this last in a diminishing purr of benediction.
“Oh, she’s all right, thanks. Not much sense in going in to tea till tea’s there, is it?—Oh, I see! All right!” Jinny grinned at Letty, and followed in the wake of the two ladies. “Come along, Luke.”
“In a minute.” Luke had planted himself on the parlour sofa, with the obvious intention not to budge.
“Now, you boss-eyed mule. They want to be alone together; they don’t want you.” Jinny conveyed to him their probable intentions when quit of the crowd, by an expressive pantomime of eating with spoons.
“Shut it! We’re not all such babies for jam.”
“I didn’t say a word about jam,” exasperated by his denseness. “And I’m jolly sure I shan’t come to tea with you again.”
Luke growled something inarticulate; and Jinny, head high in air, marched out and banged the door. Luke’s coolness hurt her sometimes. She wore his ring on the third finger of her left hand—a ring from an expensive cracker,—and he escorted her to school every morning, on the way to his own; not infrequently he carried her satchel; when both their machines were in repair, they biked; but this was not often. He was a year older than she; a hobbledehoy youth of sixteen; rather spotty about the face; and with a taste in ties, that, starting in a bout of violent enthusiasm, had suddenly stopped, before it emerged from the crude-colour stages to something really tasteful. He was surly in the company of ladies; and when his mother spoke to him, always mumbled his replies; though it was owing to her advanced views that on his sixteenth birthday he was given a latchkey: “Show the boy he’s free to come and go about the house as he likes, Matthew, and he’ll never break out as he would if he was too much kept in.” But as Mat Johnson could not be prevailed upon at the same time to raise his son’s pocket-money to more than sixpence a week, there seemed indeed very small chance for Luke to break out. Once or twice he had hung about at the end of his street till the house was locked up at half-past ten, for the pride of letting himself in at five-and-twenty to eleven; but that was all. Dating from his sister’s engagement, however, a subtle change had passed over him; he was seen to read, instead of the cricket or football papers he had been wont to patronize, a two-sheet Socialist rag, named, with misleading mildness: “Mine and Yours,”—and containing mostly threatening references to “Yours.” Also, though he rarely spoke to Sebastian, he evinced a dogged preference for that young gentleman’s company; and very often, as now, would sit in gloomy silence in the same room as the twain; and refuse to move till Letty actually ordered him forth. She hated doing this, as it looked as if she “wanted Sebastian alone,” which in its turn rather looked as if she “wanted Sebastian to kiss her.” Which she did. But it was inconsiderate of Luke to force her to the tacit admission.
“Can you make out why he’s so odd with Sebastian, mother?”