“Oh, she’s not bad! I should call her a pretty woman.”
“Well, she doesn’t seem to have much to say!”
“No one can, Sis, when you get going. She remarked quite distinctly that she liked summer better than winter, and I thought she did well to get that in.”
“Well, she was nice to the children, anyhow,” sighed Mrs. Blair, not heeding him.
Steps were heard on the stair and in a moment Mrs. Craighill entered at her husband’s side.
“I hope we haven’t kept you waiting. It’s so good of you to stop.”
“Breakfast is served always at eight o’clock,” Mrs. Blair explained as they moved toward the dining room. “I was driven from my home by that rule. Father would never yield fifteen minutes even when I had been dancing all night.”
Wayne drew back the chair for the new mistress of the house, and then sat down opposite his sister at the round table. All contributed a few commonplaces to the first difficult moments at the table, and Mrs. Blair took advantage of the opportunity to scrutinize the newcomer more closely. Mrs. Craighill was pretty, undeniably that; but it was a prettiness without distinction; it lay in the general effect, and in her ready smile rather than in particular features. Her hands were not to Mrs. Blair’s liking; they were a trifle too broad, but even this was minimized by the woman’s graceful use of them. The appearance of the coffee, which was made in a device that Wayne had set over to domestic use from the Club, brought him into the talk with his personal apologies for the absence of the silver breakfast service.
“That machine isn’t so formidable as it looks. It is warranted not to blow up. But I advise you against its product, Adelaide; the brew is as fierce as lye and will shatter the strongest nerves. Father requires water in his—about one hundred per cent. Please don’t feel obliged to use that trap if you don’t like it.”
He had spoken her name easily, and as he mentioned it she lifted her head from the cups and smiled at him with a little nod. Mrs. Blair, observant of everything, could not, in spite of the smooth-flowing talk, forget the waste areas of her ignorance of this woman, who had slipped unchallenged into her mother’s old place at the table, and whom she and Wayne were endeavouring to please. This last point touched her humour; that they, with their prior claims upon their father and the house, should be trying to impress the new wife favourably was to Fanny Blair’s mind decidedly funny.