This passed through his mind before Billy had stumped in and taken a chair opposite him. Rosina remained standing at the open door in an attitude expressive of household duties plucking at her skirts.
The painter shifted nervously on his chair. There was a dead silence. It permitted the tootling of a tin whistle to become audible, and gave the painter the happy thought of asking after the children.
“Clara’s at school,” replied Rosina, ungraciously. “She’s the second girl in her class, and could be top if she wasn’t so sulky.”
“And Davie?”
“Can’t you hear for yourself? He’s only too quiet as a rule, but since you brought him that whistle he’s been unbearable. It’s the only thing that rouses him. It was stopped up for a fortnight, and he went about like a little ghost till Billy put it right. If he only had a notion of music! Billy tried to teach him to play on it, but he’s got no head for anything. There! did you ever hear such a squeal?”
“Oh! he’s such a baby yet,” said her husband, deprecatingly.
Then the conversation languished again, and Davie’s lugubrious whistle held the field.
Billy drew vague designs on the carpet with his crutch. Matthew fidgeted and at last got up. He was meditating how to turn the conversation into a tenderer channel, and broach the holiday in common. Rosina maintained her inconclusive attitude in the doorway.
“You’ve still got those vases,” Matthew said. There being no other thought in the way, this thought escaped.
“Yes,” she rejoined; “but I don’t wonder at your asking; any day may see the end of them, servants are growing that careless. Even as it is, they only dust their outsides. If I didn’t wash them myself with tea-leaves they’d be choked up in a month.”