“Now, Mellow, you arch-hypocrite, you know I’d never dare! If I did, I expect the next time I wanted to come up and frivol in town you’d tell Sir Philip that you were spring-cleaning or something of the kind and that you couldn’t put me up.”
“How you do go on, miss, to be sure!” declared Mrs. Mellow beamingly, as she bustled about spreading the cloth for tea. “As if you didn’t know you were always as welcome as the flowers in May, spring cleaning or no spring cleaning! And I suppose, miss”—archly—“it’ll be ‘Mrs.’ the next time you visit us—if all I hear is true?”
Ann laughed. Throwing her arms round the old woman’s neck, she kissed her warmly.
“Yes, it really will, Mellow. I believe”—teasingly—“you’re just aching to hear all about it?”
“Well, miss,” admitted Mellow, holding the kettle, suspended a moment above the teapot, “I don’t want to seem inquisitive or disrespectful, you may be sure, but I would like to hear a bit about the gentleman who’s going to marry my young lady. I always think of you as my young lady, you know, Miss Ann. You were more like a daughter than anything else to Master Tony’s mother, God rest her! Perhaps you have his photograph, miss, that you could show me?”
Ann nodded smilingly—she knew her Mellow, and had anticipated this request!—and forthwith proceeded to descant on Eliot’s various virtues and the beauty of Heronsmere until Mrs. Mellow declared that she could, as she phrased it, “picture it all as plain as if she’d seen it herself.” Then, when the good woman’s kindly interest was satisfied, Ann embarked on the quest which had been uppermost in her mind when she sought the housekeeper’s room.
“Mellow, I’m worried about Tony,” she announced at last.
The smile died out of Mrs. Mellow’s face like the flame of a suddenly snuffed candle.
“You’ve noticed it, then, miss?” she parried uneasily.
“Of course I’ve noticed it. He isn’t in the least like himself, and he’s almost always out.”