Mrs. May was still rather sleepy, and, as usual, more or less inattentive to her husband’s remarks. She began turning over the letters the post had just brought for her, whereat Mr. May gave a sharp rap on the table with the handle of a fork.
“My tea!” he repeated. “D’ye hear? I want my tea!”
Mrs. May rolled her pale eyes at him protestingly as she lifted the teapot.
“I hear perfectly,” she answered with an assumption of dignity. “And please be civil! You can’t bully me as you bully Diana.”
“I bully Diana! I!” And Mr. May gave a short, scornful laugh. “Come, I like that! Why, the woman doesn’t know what bullying is! She’s had a path of roses all her life—roses, I tell you! Never a care,—never a worry,—no financial difficulties—always enough to eat, and a comfortable home to live in. What more can she want? Bully, indeed! If she had married that confounded officer for whom she wasted the best seven years of her life, then she’d have known something about bullying! Rather! And I daresay it ’ud have done her good. Better than being an old maid, anyhow.”
Mrs. May handed him his tea across the table.
“I wonder where she is?” she questioned, plaintively. “I’ve never known her so late before.”
“Went out at six,” said Mr. May, with his mouth full of bacon. “The kitchen-maid saw her go.”
Mrs. May rang a small hand-bell at her side.
The parlour-maid answered it.