Mazie Pallinder's visit to her relatives, the Lees and Randolphs, was prolonged until the Easter holidays, which came the last week in March that spring. It is a fact, verified by solid paragraphs of "newspaper gabble," that she was visiting people of those high-sounding and brilliantly suggestive names, and moving amongst the elect. The family must have been well connected on the Pallinder side at any rate—who or what the Botlisch clan were, no one would like to think. We missed Mazie. Mrs. Pallinder went about alone to teas and receptions, smiling steadily in her beautiful clothes that she wore with so dignified a grace, and reporting that she and the colonel were having a kind of ridiculous honeymoon time of it by themselves, no one calling, no banjos humming in the parlour, no impromptu little dances, no hordes of girls doing one another's hair, and munching nougat all day long in Mazie's room, no prowling about the ice-chest at midnight for chicken salad and champagne. "The house is as quiet as a funeral," she humorously complained. "All our young men have deserted us, except Mr. Peters, who comes, I think, out of sheer humanity. My mother goes to bed very early, and there the colonel and I sit by the fire like two old fogies until we fall asleep in our chairs. The other night we actually went to bed at nine o'clock. Sometimes Doctor Vardaman comes up and we have a game of cribbage. Positively I don't know why we don't take root where we sit, and grow fast to the spot like plants. On the whole this restful time may be good for the colonel. He's been so immersed in business and those Eastern men, those rich, grasping creatures, do drive him so. I often say to him, 'Oh, William, never mind the money. Haven't you made enough by this last deal in Phosphate to satisfy you yet?' I never ask any more how much he did make—I don't know anything about business, and it frightens me to think of him handling such big sums, and taking such risks and responsibilities. He gave me this ring the other day, though, so I know that whatever it was, the venture turned out all right. Isn't it a beauty? Of course, I'm not sorry he's making money, but, oh, Mrs. Lawrence, our husbands work too hard—all our men work too hard—it's not worth it. A few thousands less would content us, and what we want more than anything else in the world is to have them in good health. Shall I put you down here? Oh, I'm pleased you like this little brougham; I had it lined with the dark green cloth because, to tell the truth, I thought I would look better with my fair hair against a dark green background than if it were maroon or deep blue. Don't laugh, my dear, there're tricks in all trades, and it's a woman's trade to look her best. Home, James!"
Colonel Pallinder, however, never went to his office until ten o'clock in the morning, and might be seen posting home any day at about half-past three in the afternoon—"after banking-hours," he used to explain, when one met him; "there's really nothing to be done—nothing, in my office, at any rate." And his gesture somehow indicated wider horizons than ours and a vista of great affairs. For all that, he had no appearance of a man harried by cares; and it may be, too, that his home was not quite so quiet and restful as it was represented. "I understand that Mrs. Pallinder is trying again to get a maid for her mother," said Doctor Vardaman, half thinking aloud, half speaking to Huddesley as the latter brought him the morning paper, in company with his breakfast on the old silver-plated tray with which a previous generation of Vardamans had been served; the copper of its foundation showed through here and there under Huddesley's vigorous care; the delicate etched arabesque around the heraldic device and motto in the centre were almost worn away. Doctor Vardaman liked to fancy he could see his mother's thin, fine hands fluttering about above the cups and saucers on this tray; she, too, had had a habit of harmless and somehow perfectly dignified familiarity with her staid old servants over this one meal. The doctor opened his paper, turning at once—as everybody invariably does—to a certain concise, ominous column in the lower left-hand corner of the inside page where might be read, framed in undertakers' advertisements, and notices that So-and-So's mortuary sculptures were the best in the market, the names of yesterday's dead. Close by, another column offered you a list of marriage-licenses with a fine indifference to the fitness of things; and not far away appeared the "Help wanted—Male—Female." "I see Mrs. Pallinder's advertising for a maid," said the doctor. "And here, in another place, she wants a cook, too. She's had a great deal of trouble with servants this winter. There's a pair of us—arcades ambo!" He grinned into his coffee-cup. "Only I'm very well-off now at least. This coffee's very fine, Huddesley. It's a pity Mrs. Pallinder's having such a time."
"Yes, sir," said Huddesley respectfully. "That kind generally does have trouble, sir."
He caught the doctor's eye and coughed discreetly.
"The house is large and there must be a great deal of work," said the doctor, considering with vast satisfaction how comfortable he was in his little den.
"Nobody minds doin' work that 'e's paid for, Hi've noticed," said Huddesley. "It's when you 'ave trouble colleckin' wages that you're liable to break hoff relations haltogether—speakin', hof course, sir, as a man in my position, not as a gentleman in yours."
"The deuce!" ejaculated Doctor Vardaman inwardly. "Is that it? Well, I don't know why I'm surprised—I might have suspected as much—in fact, I have suspected as much off and on."
"Hof course coloured people are very precarious, sir, very precarious; you don't know 'ow they live, nor you don't want to," said Huddesley, arranging the dishes. "Their servants is hall coloured, sir, you know. Hi halways think 'Like master, like man'—that's the hold sayin', sir."
"I must stop him," thought Doctor Vardaman guiltily. "It's disgraceful listening to a servant's gossip this way—Ahem! Who was that I heard you having such a squabble with at the kitchen door yesterday afternoon, Huddesley?" he asked abruptly.