“How convenient! I mean, how strange!” said Mrs. Jebb. “I was just about to ask if you would have any objection to my going over to Millsby Hall this evening.”
“Why—are you invited too?” said Andy, very much astonished. “I mean, there’s no reason why you should not be dining with the Attertons, only I hadn’t heard——”
“Once a lady always a lady, of course,” replied Mrs. Jebb, smoothing her lace cravat. “But the conventions of life are such that, as lady-cook-housekeeper, I neither am, nor expect to be, bidden to Mrs. Atterton’s table. I was referring to the Long Night.”
She gave to the two last words such a melancholy emphasis that Andy had a vague idea, for the moment, that she was in some new way referring to the demise of Mr. Jebb.
“The long night?” he echoed stupidly.
“I mean the final evening of the Parish Dancing Class,” said Mrs. Jebb, “which Mr. and Miss Fanny Kirke have pressed me to attend.”
“Of course,” said Andy. “I’d forgotten. It is to be held at Millsby Hall, of course, so that Mrs. Atterton may see the final practice of the country dances for the Garden Fête next week.”
“Mr. and Miss Kirke told me in confidence,” added Mrs. Jebb, with an indescribable air of being ‘in the know,’ “that Mrs. Atterton’s back would not permit of her coming to the village schoolroom.”
“Ah,” said Andy, to whom even the back of the Beloved’s mamma was sacred. “Well, go, by all means, Mrs. Jebb. I expect I shall see you dancing like a girl.”
“My girlhood’s days are over,” sighed Mrs. Jebb. “But”—she cheered up—“married ladies are very popular in ballrooms now, I understand. The gentlemen seem to like mature conversation combined with their dancing. And I do not intend to refuse. I think it neither Christian nor right, Mr. Deane, for a widow to make a suttee of herself.”