“Dear me!” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, clad in the usual short skirt and ill-fitting blouse, rose to receive the in-coming guest.
“How nice of you, Letitia, to come! So early too! I’m afraid luncheon has been cleared—”
“Pray don’t speak of it,” interrupted Miss Leslie—“of course at four o’clock——”
“Is it four? Dear me!” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir smiled sleepily. “Why, then it’s time for tea. You will have some tea?”
“Thank you!” murmured Miss Letty, “but don’t put yourself out in any way. Is Boy——?”
“Quite well? Oh yes!” and Boy’s mother rang the bell as she spoke. “Boy is in the dining-room with his father. He has just had his bread-and-milk. I have left him there because I think he keeps Jim a little bit in order. Jim is really quite impossible to-day,—but of course he wouldn’t hurt the child.”
“Do you mean,” said Miss Letitia, her cheeks growing paler, “that your husband is ... well!—you know! And that Boy is with him while in that terrible condition?”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir laughed.
“Of course! How horrified you look, Letitia! But you have no idea how useful Boy is in that way. He really saves pounds’ worth of furniture. When Boy is strapped in his chair, and Jim is on the booze, Jim never knocks the things about as he would if he were alone,—because you see he is afraid of upsetting Boy. It is not out of kindness to Boy exactly, but simply because he hates to hear a child yell. It gets on his nerves. Then of course Boy thinks his father is ill, and pities him so much that the two get on together capitally.”
And this lymphatic lump of a woman laughed again, the while Miss Letitia gazed blankly at the fireplace and endeavoured to control her indignant feelings. The maidservant came in just then in answer to the bell.