“Looks well, doesn’t she?” he said to Ursula in a loud sotto voce. “You shall have just such another; but Harriet’s a devilish good-looking girl.”
The subject of this comment did not appear to hear it, but Ursula fancied she? saw her aunt wince. Harriet was helping the faded woman to put things together. In the hall a gong was sounding a hideous bellow at the door.
“Late as usual,” remonstrated Mynheer Mopius. “Hurry up, my dear. Gracious goodness, how awkward you are getting!” The frail little creature in the stiff silk caught hold of Harriet’s arm with one skinny hand, and Ursula, as she watched her movements, understood something of her unwillingness to exert herself.
For his own use Mynheer Mopius never bought anything cheap, and all the appointments of the dinner-table were excellent. Of course he communicated prices to the new arrival, and Ursula, soon discovering that she was expected constantly to admire, entered into the spirit of the thing, and asked the cost of the silver candlesticks. Her uncle ascended into regions of unusual good humor, and ordered up a bottle of sweet Spanish wine for her, “such as you ignorant females enjoy,” he said. He grew very angry with his wife for refusing to have any. “But the doctor forbids it.” “Oh, damn your doctor. Never have a doctor till you’re dead; that’s my advice. Then he can’t do any harm.”
Mevrouw Mopius meekly swallowed a little of the liquid, her long nose drooping over the glass. Her husband sat tyrannically watching her. “Drink it all,” he said; “you want a tonic. You shall have some every day.” And she drank it, although she implicitly believed in the doctor, and the doctor, a teetotaler, had told her it meant death.
“Doctors are all scoundrels,” said Mynheer Mopius. “Hey, Harriet?”
The girl’s dead father had been a medical man.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “Only lawyers are honest. That’s why doctors die poor.”
Mynheer Mopius laughed heartily. “I like your cheek,” he said. “Make hay while your sun shines, Harriet. A man can’t stand it from an old woman.”
Mevrouw Mopius sniffed.