Fire and water would not serve Miss Black. The bath water was always cold at the Vicarage, and the drinking water was invariably warm. Butter, that sensitive ally of the housekeeper, bore her a grudge. Miss Black said all the Riff butter was bad. In London she had said the same. Biscuits became demoralized directly they set tin in the house. The first that emerged from the box were crisp, delicious, but in a day or two they were all weary, tough, and tasteless. They were kept on plates on sideboards in the sun, or thrust into mousy cupboards. She left off ordering gingerbread nuts at last, which her brother liked, because they all stuck together like putty. She attributed this peculiarity to the proximity of the Rieben.
Miss Black was no more perturbed by the ostracism in which she lived as regards the vegetable and mineral kingdom than Napoleon was by the alliance of Europe against him. She combined a high opinion of herself with a rooted conviction that everything vexatious or disagreeable was inherent in the nature of things—a sort of original sin. It was in the fallen nature of butter to be rancid, and eggs to be laid stale, and milk to be sour, and villagers to cheat, and old people to be fretful, and pretty women (like Annette) to be vain and unscrupulous, and men (like her brother) to care inordinately about food and to be enslaved by external attractions. She expected these things, and many more, as she stumped through life, and she was not disappointed.
"I think you are wrong, Walter," she said, masticating a plasmon biscuit, "in making Miss Georges take that bit in the anthem as a solo. I went to see Mrs. Cocks this afternoon, and we got talking of the choir, and I am sure she did not like it."
"I cannot steer my course entirely by Mrs. Cocks."
"Of course not. But she told me that in Mr. Jones's time——"
"I am rather tired of hearing of Mr. Jones and his times."
"In his time all the trebles took the solo together, to prevent any jealousy or ill-feeling."
"I can't prevent jealousy of Miss Georges," said Mr. Black, looking coldly at his sister, and then still more coldly at the cup of tea she handed him, made quarter of an hour before by the young servant who, as the Miss Blinketts who had trained her had faithfully warned Miss Black, "mistook bubbling for boiling."
The tea was the consistency of treacle, and the cream his sister poured into it instantly took the contorted worm-like shapes which sour cream does take. Miss Black drank hers slowly, not finding it good, but thinking it was like all other tea.
"You won't make the jealousy less by putting her forward in everything."