"Oh! Caroline," she said, placing the jam on the table. "I thought you might like some of this for your tea. It is very stormy out to-night, is it not? I hope you have not caught cold?"
She had a habit of beginning that way—"Oh! Caroline"—when she intended to give an order or make a request.
In making her perfunctory reply, Caroline never imagined for one moment that her own healthy appetite was often satisfied at Miss Ethel's expense. She had bargained for food, and food was there; and there was an end of it. But the front-door bell rang, and something in Miss Ethel's expression did then pierce her self-engrossment.
"Is anything the matter, Miss Ethel?"
"No, no." Miss Ethel stood there, pressing her thin hands together—striving to speak calmly. "It is only the people to look over the house, I expect." Then she turned round and walked with her head erect across the hall.
The door opened to disclose a short, thin, alert man with a taller, well-nourished woman in handsome clothes, wearing a thick coating of scented powder on her full cheeks and thick nose. Over her whole person was written in characters for all to read the consciousness of having plenty of money. It was new to her, and never for a moment could she forget it; while her husband also fed his satisfaction in having plenty of money every time he looked at her. And yet they were not unkindly people; ready to do a kindness if it did not take away from them any of the luxuries, pleasures, delightful enviousness in others less successful, which gradually would give them atrophy of the soul.
So they thought good-naturedly enough, that though the old girl looked a bit frosty and forbidding, that was no wonder—it must be a nasty jar to have to turn out of a house where you had lived so many years. And they made every allowance for the somewhat ceremonious manner in which she conducted them through the rooms.
"Ah yes; when I used to see you come into the front seats at the Flodmouth concerts with your respected father, and me in the shilling gallery, I little thought—— But it's one down and the other come up in these days, Miss Wilson. Same all the world over."
"Look, William!" said the wife, jogging her husband's arm. "That's a beautiful old bureau." Then she turned to Miss Ethel. "I dare say you have a lot of old furniture here that will be too big for your little house. Couldn't we offer to relieve you of some of it? I could do very well with that bureau and no doubt other things besides."
William whipped out his pocket-book. "Yes, Miss Wilson, you just say what you want to part with, and I'll have the lot valued by anybody you like. Pity to let the things go out of the house." He paused, suddenly noticing the grey shade on Miss Ethel's face: then added encouragingly: "You're quite in the fashion, you know, Miss Wilson. Everybody's doing it, from dukes downwards."