I felt hot and uncomfortable, everything was so different from what I had expected; for the room was not in the least shabby, and the tea-things placed ready added to the pleasant home-like aspect of the place.
“You have not walked?” said Mr John Dempster.
“Oh, yes,” I replied.
“From—where?”
I told him.
“Camberwell? And I was so unreasonable as to ask you to come all this way.”
I did not know how it was, but I somehow felt as if I had come to visit some very old friends, and in quite a short time we were chatting confidentially about our affairs. They soon knew all about my own home, and my life since I left school so suddenly; and on my side I learned that Mrs John Dempster had had a very serious illness, but was recovering slowly, and that they were contemplating going abroad, the doctors having said that she must not stay in our damp climate for another winter.
I learned, too, that, as Mr John Dempster said, when things came to the worst they improved. It had been so here, for the night after his visit to his cousin in the city, a letter had come from Mrs John Dempster’s brother, who was in the North-west—wherever that might be—and their temporary troubles were at an end.
That would have been a delightfully pleasant meal but for one thing. No allusion was made to the visit to the city, and though I sat trembling, for fear they should both begin to thank me for my offer, not a word was said. The tea was simple. The flowers on the table and in the window smelled sweetly, and the birds sang, while there was something about Mrs John that fascinated me, and set me thinking about the happy old days at home.
The one unpleasantly was the conduct of the little maid they kept. She was a round rosy-faced girl of about fifteen, I suppose, but dressed in every respect, cap and apron and all, like a woman of five-and-twenty. In fact she looked like a small-sized woman with very hard-looking shiny dark eyes.