The fire was gone beyond the reach of his unscientific poking. That, too, often happened with a man who had the habit of standing by his bookshelf reading gluttonously, with his austere person frozen into a grotesque attitude, some book which he had not the patience to carry to the fireside: and he was now upon his knees making pathetically clumsy efforts to revitalize the flame when his inefficient housekeeper opened the door and showed Anne into the room.
It eased the situation for them both. Anne indeed, was nervous, so nervous that she had walked three times past the door before she pulled the bell. She had a befitting awe of the priest, and a tremendous respect for the man. At Effie’s, because the circumstances there were tense, it had seemed an easy thing to come to Peter’s, but she had needed to call on her reserves of courage to keep her place on the doorstep after she had rung the bell.
Now, however, when she came into the room and saw what he was at, she pushed him gently aside, and took the poker from his hand. She nursed the fire skilfully; she was with familiar things which gave her back her confidence.
As to the trouble, she diagnosed it in a moment. “That woman of yours is a slut,” she said. “And I’ll talk to her before I go. I reckon I’ve the right, me and you being connections by marriage.”
She looked at him over her shoulder, and saw that he did not recognize her. How, indeed, should he? She had avoided Ada’s wedding, and she was one of a large flock: a face, perhaps, but not a name to him. “I’m Anne Branstone,” she explained. “Sam’s mother; and I’ll not have you blaming Sam for this.”
“For the fire?” asked Peter vaguely, he was rather muddled by her brisk incursion.
“No,” said Anne, almost gaily; “for the fat that’s in the fire.”
She thought she had his measure now—the sort of a man who could live in a dirty room like this, with a choked ash-pan and fire-irons with the rust thick on them. But Peter was greater than that. She judged him by those of his surroundings which had significance for her, and not by books which expressed everything for him and nothing for her.
“Mrs. Branstone!” he said, as if realizing now with whom he had to deal.
“Sam’s mother,” she repeated, rising from a healthy fire; “and I’ve told you where not to put the blame. You can, maybe, think yourself of the right place to put it.”