“Two widows living near together should be on good terms,” said Mrs. Jebb, her annoyance also cooling, while prudence dictated a course obviously pleasing to Andy. “Will you step into my room and have a cup of tea? I am no breakfast-eater, and generally take one at eleven. And”—she concluded the amend generously, “Jimmy shall have a biscuit with pink sugar on the top.”
That settled it; for Jimmy was so fond of eating that he would have accompanied the sweep—his idea of the embodiment of evil—to search for biscuits with pink sugar on them.
So the baize door of the study banged in the rear of an amicable trio while Andy sat down and mopped his brow. It was difficult to catch evolution by the tail after that—he seemed to have gone so far from it. But he knitted his brow, shook his fountain-pen, and started on the quest.
One thought, however, would creep in and out of the books of reference and between the written words—it was not so easy as it looked, to live in a place where everybody was so inextricably mixed up with everybody else. And later in the day he was to have another striking proof of this queer inter-independence of which a townsman knows so little. For when he walked past the Petches’ cottage he beheld the Attertons’ landau, drawn by a sleek and fat pair of horses and driven by a sleek and fat coachman, standing in front of the little gate. Elizabeth Atterton and an ample lady in grey occupied the carriage, and they were inspecting a parrot in a cage, which Mrs. Petch rested on the step.
“I trust,” said Mrs. Atterton, “that William is in good health. He looks”—she paused— “he looks far from well, Emma.”
“Moulting, ’m,” said Mrs. Petch. “That’s all.”
“But this is not the season for moulting,” objected Elizabeth.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Petch, with an easy smile, “but William always was different to other birds. Scores and hundreds of times I’ve heard my poor mistress say so.”
“Well, it was a remark my poor aunt often made,” said Mrs. Atterton, eyeing the dejected attitude and naked chest of the parrot doubtfully.
“I’m sure you give him every attention. You would, of course, when your annuity dies with him. My poor aunt no doubt felt that.” She paused again, and added in answer to Mrs. Petch’s look of wounded innocence, “Of course, you would in any case. I do not forget what a devoted maid you were to poor Aunt Arabella.”