“Of course. I’m afraid you are a great sufferer.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Atterton pleasantly, “it is not that I have any great pain, but I collapse. Don’t I, Elizabeth?”
“Mamma is so patient,” said Elizabeth, with loving sincerity. “She hates to make us feel——”
“Come, come, come! Bring that cup of tea! Bring that cup of tea!” interrupted William, croaking hideously.
“Poor Aunt Arabella! Couldn’t you fancy you heard her voice from the grave?” murmured Mrs. Atterton, shedding an easy tear.
“William belonged to my great-aunt, Mr. Deane,” explained Elizabeth.
Then it swept over Andy again with renewed force, how everybody here was connected in some way with everybody else. He had always known in a general way, of course, as we all do, that if you slip on a banana skin and use expressions better left unemployed you may influence some one for evil in central China—but he had never before come near enough to the principle to be able to see the working of it with the naked eye.
“I thought when I first came to Gaythorpe that William was a person,” said Andy, noticing the pink nails of Elizabeth’s ungloved hand upon the carriage door.
“Well, poor Aunt Arabella always did say he had an immortal soul—and you never know,” said Mrs. Atterton, willing to give everything created the benefit of the doubt.
Then the fat coachman, who was tired of waiting, made one of his fat charges stamp idly on the ground in a perfunctory manner, and Mrs. Atterton said the horses were growing restive and it was time to go.