Her lips trembled, her swollen eyes were without light or beauty. She was as distinctly unlovely as a handsome woman can be. The man, however, did not look at her. He had opened the door of the clock and was studying its internal machinery. He answered quietly:
“I’ll have to go now for a while. I must finish my letter. It’s got to go out to-night, but I was going to ask you if you wouldn’t like to have your supper up here? It’s now a little after five; at six o’clock I’ll bring it, and if you don’t mind, I’ll bring mine up, too. I just take tea and some bread and butter and jam or stuff—whatever Elsie happens to have round. If you’d like it, you fix up the table and get things into some sort of shape.”
He walked toward the door. With the handle in his hand he said:
“You don’t mind my taking mine up here, too, do you? If you do, just say so.”
“No, I don’t mind,” said Mariposa, in the stifled voice of the weeper.
When he had gone she listlessly tried to create some kind of order in the chaotic room. She felt exhausted and indifferent. Once she found herself looking at her watch with a sort of heavy desire to have the time pass quickly. She dreaded her loneliness. She caught a glimpse of herself in the chimney-piece glass and felt neither shame nor disgust at her unsightly appearance.
At six o’clock she heard the quick, decisive step in the hall that earlier in the afternoon had broken in on her wrangle with the expressman. A knock came on the door that sounded exceedingly like a kick bestowed under difficulties. She opened it, and her new friend entered bearing a large tray set forth with the paraphernalia of a cold supper and with the evening paper laid on top. He put it on the cleared table, and together they lifted off its contents and set them forth. There was cold meat, jam, bread and butter, a brown pottery teapot with the sprout broken and two very beautiful cups, delicate and richly decorated. Then they sat down, one at each side of the table, and the meal began.
Mariposa did not care to eat. Sitting under the blaze of the gilt chandelier, with the firelight gilding one side of her flushed and disfigured face, she poured out the tea, while her companion attacked the cold meat with good appetite. The broken spout leaked, and she found herself guiltily regarding the man opposite, as she surreptitiously tried to sop up with a napkin the streams of tea it sent over the table-cloth.
He appeared to have the capacity for seeing anything that occurred in his vicinity.
“Never mind the teapot,” he said, with his mouth full; “it always does that. It’s no good getting a new one. I think the boys break them. Elsie says they play boats with them in the bath-tub.”