He looked at her with curious eagerness, and then held out his hand. Apparently he had no objection to that.
"Well, so long!"
"Sans adieu!"
Mona sighed as she re-entered the dreary little sitting-room. However freely she might let the breezes of heaven blow through the house in Rachel's absence, the rooms seemed to be as musty as ever five minutes after the windows had been shut.
The autumn evenings were growing chilly, but the white curtains, by the laws of the Medes and Persians, had to remain on duty a little longer; and great as was Mona's partiality for a good fire, the thermometer must have registered a very low figure indeed before she could have taken refuge in Sally's kitchen—at any other time than on Saturday afternoon, immediately after the weekly cleaning.
Tea was on the table. It had stood there since five o'clock.
Mona sighed again.
"If one divides servants," she said, "into three classes—those, who can be taught to obey orders in the spirit, those who can be taught to obey orders in the letter, and those who cannot be taught to obey orders at all—Sally is a bad second, with an occasional strong tendency to lapse into the third. I wish she had seen fit to lapse into the third to-night."
She pushed aside the cold buttered toast, helped herself to overdrawn tea, and glanced with a shiver at the shavings in the grate. In another moment her sorrows were forgotten. Leaning against the glass shade of the gilt clock on the mantelpiece, smiling at her across the room, stood a fair, fat, friendly budget in Lady Munro's handwriting.
"Gaudeamus igitur!" Mona seized the tea-cosy, tossed it up to the ceiling, and caught it again with an affectionate squeeze.