Eliza had got the table set out nicely, with a foaming jug of porter beside the ham and potatoes. Before they had finished, Marion had persuaded Richard to take his wife and her to the National Gallery, the next day but one, which, fortunately for her purpose, was Whit Monday, a day whereon Richard, who was from the north always took a holiday.
At the National Gallery, the house-painter, in virtue of his craft, claimed the exercise of criticism; and his remarks were amusing enough. He had more than once painted a sign-board for a country inn, which fact formed a bridge between the covering of square yards with color and the painting of pictures; and he naturally used the vantage-ground thus gained to enhance his importance with his wife and Miss Clare. He was rather a clever fellow too, though as little educated in any other direction than that of his calling as might well be.
All the woman seemed to care about in the pictures was this or that something which reminded her, often remotely enough I dare say, of her former life in the country. Towards the close of their visit, they approached a picture—one of Hobbima's, I think—which at once riveted her attention.
"Look, look, Dick!" she cried. "There's just such a cart as my father used to drive to the town in. Farmer White always sent him when the mistress wanted any thing and he didn't care to go hisself. And, O Dick! there's the very moral of the cottage we lived in! Ain't it a love, now?"
"Nice enough," Dick replied. "But it warn't there I seed you, Liza. It wur at the big house where you was housemaid, you know. That'll be it, I suppose,—away there like, over the trees."
They turned and looked at each other, and Marion turned away. When she looked again, they were once more gazing at the picture, but close together, and hand in hand, like two children.
As they went home in the omnibus, the two averred they had never spent a happier holiday in their lives; and from that day to this no sign of their quarrelling has come to Marion's knowledge. They are not only her regular attendants on Saturday evenings, but on Sunday evenings as well, when she holds a sort of conversation-sermon with her friends.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MR. MORLEY.
As soon as my cousin Judy returned from Hastings, I called to see her, and found them all restored, except Amy, a child of between eight and nine. There was nothing very definite the matter with her, but she was white and thin, and looked wistful; the blue of her eyes had grown pale, and her fair locks had nearly lost the curl which had so well suited her rosy cheeks. She had been her father's pride for her looks, and her mother's for her sayings,—at once odd and simple. Judy that morning reminded me how, one night, when she was about three years old, some time after she had gone to bed, she had called her nurse, and insisted on her mother's coming. Judy went, prepared to find her feverish; for there had been jam-making that day, and she feared she had been having more than the portion which on such an occasion fell to her share. When she reached the nursery, Amy begged to be taken up that she might say her prayers over again. Her mother objected; but the child insisting, in that pretty, petulant way which so pleased her father, she yielded, thinking she must have omitted some clause in her prayers, and be therefore troubled in her conscience. Amy accordingly kneeled by the bedside in her night-gown, and, having gone over all her petitions from beginning to end, paused a moment before the final word, and inserted the following special and peculiar request: "And, p'ease God, give me some more jam to-morrow-day, for ever and ever. Amen."