The door opened, and the parlour-maid announced, “Mrs. Beehive and Mrs. Henry.”
CHAPTER XI: THE RETURN OF THE BRIDE
Polly had invited several of us to meet a young bride. Mrs. Henry said that when her brother William heard of the party he said at once, “Of course you won’t go until you know who she was.” His sister assured him that it was a matter of indifference to us who the girl was; we all knew her husband, and that would speak for her.
“I don’t believe that was the end of Mr. William.” This was the little bait I offered her, and it landed a beauty.
“The end of William!” she exclaimed; “not a bit of it. He said that if the girl was a nonentity to begin with, marrying Mr. Spicer wouldn’t galvanize her into anything worthy of the name of life; and that if she was anybody before she married, the fact that we knew Mr. Spicer wouldn’t alter the shape of her immortal soul. And what do you think he said after that?” she added rather breathlessly.
“What?” we asked all together, with round eyes.
“That we were evidently going to meet to-day in the spirit of vultures on the track of food, and that if the girl happens to be rather dead stuff we shall probably like her better than if she is a frisky lamb!”
Mrs. Beehive confessed that she “didn’t quite follow his idea.” Polly, who was looking out of the window, remarked, “Mr. William would make the world an awful place if he had his way. Imagine the menus he would write! Your talking about carrion—well, you said something very like it—reminded me.—
“Soup. Odds and ends off people’s plates.
“Fish. Brill. Not absolutely fresh. Has fallen once on to the pavement and innumerable times on to the floor of the shop before it got here.