Tommy took no notice of her. “’Tisn’t Annabel,” he said, shaking off his mother’s restraining hand. “Annabel has curls, an’ is pretty, an’ smiles. That do be ’n ugly girl, that be.”
Annabel ran forward and smacked him. “I hate you, boy,” she cried.
Tommy was quite ready to fight, but his mother’s grip prevented him; all he could do was to make a hideous grimace as he was pushed ignominously into the kitchen where the door was shut upon him.
Later in the morning the naval officer’s wife summoned Mrs. Tregennis to her sitting-room (the room on the ground floor on the left-hand side of the door), and expressed her wishes and views. “I must live quite economically,” she explained. “I do not wish to spend much money on food. I should like you to do all the shopping, but there must be no extravagance and no waste. We shall eat very little meat, but plenty of vegetables. I do not like to think of cows and sheep, animals that lend charm and poetry to country life, being sacrificed to the material needs of my babe and myself. Vegetarian dishes form the only Christian menu. To-day we will have haricot beans made up into some little delicacy, and for the second course a small rice pudding. Please take a half-pennyworth of milk for me each day, and skim off the cream that rises to the top for my afternoon tea.”
“Oh, my blessed fäather; I’ve never met her like,” confided Mrs. Tregennis later to Aunt Keziah Kate who had just dropped in for a bit of newsin’. “Two years of she’ll about finish me, I reckon. Cream on the top of a ha’porth of milk; my dear soul!”
Four weeks of the downstairs visitors had made Mrs. Tregennis quite irritable and short-tempered, and when, towards the end of March, the postman brought an unstamped letter she quite crossly refused to take it in. It came by the afternoon delivery, and Tregennis went to the door as his wife was upstairs.
“Ellen,” he called, “here’s a letter for ee, an’ tuppence to pay.”
“An’ what’ll I be payin’ tuppence for?”
“It can’t be left without; there’s no stamp on ’e.”
“Then it must be taken back. I don’t want ’e.” To emphasize her words Mrs. Tregennis retreated from the head of the stairs and closed her bedroom door.