“She is seldom able to receive company in the evening. But I will see how she is feeling to-night.”
She had remarkable self-possession, as March had noted already. She got herself out of the room without mumble or halt. She walked well, and with a single eye to her destination, with no diffident conjectures as to how she moved or looked. March had keen perceptions and critical notions upon such points.
“What an interesting looking girl,” observed May, in an undertone.
And March, as cautiously—“I hope she will let us see the little one! She is the jolliest grig you can conceive of.”
Both tried not to look about them while waiting for the hostess’ return. The place was forlornly clean, and the new carpets gave forth the ungoodly smell of oily wool that nothing but time and use can dissipate. Plaintive efforts to abolish stiffness were evident in chairs grouped in conversational attitudes near the summer-fronted fireplace, and a table pulled well away from the wall, with books and photographs lying about on it. March could fancy Hetty doing these things, then standing disheartened, in the waste of moquette, under the consciousness that there was not one-fifth enough furniture for the vast rooms. At this point, he spoke again subduedly:
“What possessed the church to build these desolate barns and call them family parlors?”
May was a parish worker, and looked her surprise.
“A parsonage must have plenty of parlor room for church sociables.”
“Then those who use them ought to furnish them. Or, say! it wouldn’t be amiss to keep them up as show places are abroad—by charging a shilling admission fee.”
Hetty’s return saved him from deserved rebuke.