Then Mrs. Jebb herself. She also suffered—not from blighted affection exactly, but from a blight upon certain vague hopes which were ready to ripen into affection. It was, she had felt on coming to the Vicarage, notorious that young men did, in the present age, often marry women old enough to be their maiden aunts; and though Mr. Jebb still loomed monumental in her heart, she had a large heart, and there was plenty of room for another occupant. So she went about her work with a certain romantic melancholy that was not unpleasant, and her sighs were like the wind rushing sadly through those empty spaces which Andy declined to fill. She was short with the little maid, however, during those days, to a degree that would have caused Sophy to rebel if she had not been so full of her own concerns, and inclined to disregard a universe on account of a blue silk tie presented to another young lady.
So, by the day previous to the school-treat, there was a charged atmosphere at Gaythorpe Vicarage, which only required a match to make it explode; and the match was provided by Mrs. Jebb in the shape of a gingerbread pudding, which she had absently sweetened with carbonate of soda, instead of sugar.
Andy rang the bell.
“Take this stuff away,” he said. “It is not fit for human food. Tell Mrs. Jebb I wish to speak to her.”
But in the five minutes which elapsed before she appeared, Andy’s wrath began to cool, and, unfortunately, his courage cooled with it, so that the dignified and stern rebuke which had been waiting for her at the moment of tasting the pudding petered out on her arrival into a rather feeble—
“I say, Mrs. Jebb, this won’t do, you know. You really must cook better than this.”
“When I entered your service,” said Mrs. Jebb, whom Sophy had not spared in her recital of the message, “I expected to be treated very differently from what I have been in many ways. I never expected to be sent for by cheeky maid-servants, in a manner”—she paused, gulped, and concluded—“that no gentleman should send for a lady in.”
“It’s not only the pudding,” said Andy, nettled afresh by this want of a proper attitude, “it’s your cooking altogether. You must see that.”
But Mrs. Jebb’s interview with the triumphant Sophy had left her in a state of mind that allowed her to see nothing but a mist, through which Andy’s boyish, reproving face loomed as a last irritation. She wanted to box his ears, but replied instead—
“If you are not satisfied, I will go. Pray accept my notice from this day forth.”