“She has been kind enough to help us here—she is at work now. You will please to overlook——”
“My dear Mrs. Middleham——”
“If you will follow me I will show you where she is.”
Mary rose from her knees to receive him, having wiped her hands and arms on her apron. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes alight—but she looked none the worse, assuredly, for that.
When Duplessis, stooping his fair head, entered the kitchen, she came forward lightly to receive him. “Good-morning,” she said. “You will take me as I am?”
“I’ll take you how I can,” said Tristram, shaking hands. “Your mother prepared me for this attack of industry. You might let me help you.”
Mary laughed. “Don’t destroy my mother’s illusions. She is convinced of the complete idleness of the upper classes. If she lost that she would have to alter all her ideas of society.”
“I don’t know anything about the upper classes; but Mrs. Middleham can have no notion how hard I can work,” Duplessis said. “I was at it all last night. Dancing till Heaven knows when.”
“I’ll warrant Heaven does,” said Mrs. Middleham to herself. She was not able to find anything to say to this magnificent visitor.
Duplessis and Mary made a fairer show, for she had learned to dread, with the high world, a single second of awkwardness. She was even able to continue her work on her knees and chat with Tristram, who, for his part, sat calmly on the kitchen table and talked nineteen to the dozen. It is difficult to say which side of this simple performance scandalized Mrs. Middleham the more—that Mary should be on her knees with a scrubbing brush, or that Duplessis should not be. The good blunt woman sat it out as long as her endurance would last, growing more and more stiff in the back, primming her lips in and in until she showed none at all. Finally she rose with a “You will excuse me,” and stalked out of her own kitchen. She sat in the empty parlour and looked at a photograph album as a protest. Meanwhile Mary’s hour had come. It had been on the edge of her tongue to ask her mother to stay—but she had dismissed the thought as unworthy. She fixed her mind upon the plateau of Mariposa lilies, and her eyes on her work, and scrubbed for life.