Amelia, without a word to say for herself, and suffering acutely from a social awkwardness which a lonely life in sordid circumstances had made much worse, was altogether out of it. Ethel and Gerty had charm and elegance; they spoke a different language; they might have belonged to a different race. Amelia’s natural ally should have been her mother. They had much in common but that depressed and inefficient woman was nearly as tongue-tied as her eldest daughter. Ethel and Gerty were almost as far beyond the range of Maria as they were beyond the range of Amelia; their expensive clothes and their correct talk of This and That and These and Those, with clear, high-pitched intonation filled her with dismay. Maria, even in her own drawing-room, was in such awe of them that she could make no overtures to Amelia, although she simply longed to point to the vacant sofa beside her and to say, “Come and sit over here, my dear.”
The eldest daughter of the house bitterly regretted the folly that had brought her among them again after so many years of outlawry. But in a few minutes her father came in and then she got on better. He was the real cause of her present sufferings, but his own freedom from self-consciousness or the least tendency to pose amid surroundings which seemed to crave that form of weakness was exactly what the situation called for.
“Hulloa, Melia,” he said heartily. “Pleased to see you, gel.” His lips saluted her cheek with a loud smack. There was not a suspicion of false shame about him. He was master in his own house at any rate. And when he made up his mind to do a thing he did it thoroughly. “What do you think on ’em?” He pointed to his grandchildren rather proudly. “That’s Gwennie. And that’s Gladdie. This is your Auntie Melia.”
The ears of Mrs. Doctor Cockburn began to burn a little as the eyes of Gwennie and Gladdie grew rounder and rounder.
“Gladdie favors her ma. Don’t you think so, eh? And they’ve both got a look of Grandma—what?”
“I see a look of you, you know, Josiah,” said Auntie Gerty with an air of immense discretion.
“Um. Maybe. Have they had any strawberries, Grandma?”
Their mother thought they ought not to have strawberries, but their grandfather was convinced that a few would not hurt them and chose half a dozen himself from a blue dish on the tea table and presented them personally.
“There, Gwenneth, what do you say?” Mrs. Doctor Cockburn’s own mouth was full of prunes and prisms. “Thank you what—thank you, Grandpa.”
“That’s a good little gel.” There was a geniality, an indulgence, in the tone of Josiah that he had never thought of extending to his own children in their nursery days. “And I tell you what, Ma—if they get a pain under their pinnies they must blame their old grand-dad.”