“Yes,” said Pinckney shamefacedly, almost, and wondering what sin against the covenances he had committed now.
“And she after that journey from N’York. Richard Pinckney, you are a—man—I was going to have called you a fool—but it’s the same thing. Here, come on both of you—the child must be starving. This is the breakfast room, Phyl—Phyl! I will never get used to that name; no matter, I’m getting an old woman, and mustn’t grumble—mustn’t grumble—umph!”
She took Pinckney’s walking-stick from him and, with the end of it, picked up a duster that the mysterious Dinah, evidently, had left lying on the floor.
She put the duster out on the veranda, rang a bell and ordered the coloured boy who answered it to send in breakfast.
Phyl, commanded by Miss Pinckney, sat down to table just as she was without removing her hat.
The old lady had come to the conclusion that the newcomer must be faint with hunger after her journey, and when Miss Pinckney came to one of her conclusions, there was nothing more to be said on the matter.
It was a pleasant room, chintzy and sunny; they sat down to a gate-legged table that would just manage to seat four comfortably whilst the urn was brought in, a copper urn in which the water was kept at boiling point by a red hot iron contained in a cylinder.
Phyl knew that urn. They had one like it at Kilgobbin and she said so, but Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear her. There were times when this lady was almost rude—or seemed so owing to inattention, her bustling mind often outrunning the conversation or harking back to the past when it ought to have been in the present.
Tea making, and the making of tea was a solemn rite at Vernons, absorbed her whole attention, but Pinckney noticed this morning that the hand, that old, perfect, delicately shaped hand, trembled ever so slightly as it measured the tea from the tortoise-shell covered tea caddy, and that the thin lips, lips whose thinness seemed only the result of the kisses of Time, were moving as though debating some question unheard.
He recognised that the coming of Phyl had produced a great effect on Maria Pinckney. No one knew her better than he, for no one loved her so well.