“Give her some claret for the present, and make her eat something, wine and meat are as good as quinine any day.”
Mrs. Waring was the most docile creature breathing, she swallowed obediently everything set before her, when suddenly a little tremble ran all down her and shook her gently, and she let her fork drop with a little clash.
She had caught sight just over the sideboard of one of Brydon’s sketches of Gwen, that she had sent Mrs. Fellowes.
Her husband had not seen the picture, so he only pressed her knife hand gently, and murmured, “Nerves!”
She went back obediently to her meal, and if they had given her the whole of a chicken and a quart of claret, she would have swallowed both without a murmur, so long as they let her get finished and go close up to that picture.
Mr. Waring’s meal, on the contrary, was very interesting to him, and he enjoyed it with a zest that set him playing at a quite new and charming departure in classification. A graceful pretty house-mother moving on the field of his vision, and supplying every unspoken want of his, was a pleasing variation.
“A charming type, this serving woman,” he reflected, regarding her with gentle favour, “charming. By no means a unique or even an unusual one, but really quite charming and pleasant to observe. In that woman the maternal instinct will be found in a very advanced state of development—and yet, if I recollect aright,” he started, frowning, and pausing, with a morsel of meat on his fork, he contemplated her curiously, “Yes, I believe my recollections are accurate, she has never had any children and probably, after this lapse of time, will not produce any. Very strange indeed, very strange, another of those most puzzling instances of Nature’s waste.”
He sighed and reflected a little on Mrs. Fellowes as she helped his wife to cream, then he went rather sadly to his tart, feeling a slight tinge of contempt for Nature’s inconsistency.
When Mrs. Waring had consumed as much nourishment as her entertainers thought fit for her, Mr. Fellowes went over to the sideboard, unhooked the sketch, and propped it against the claret jug.
“The colouring is good, isn’t it?” he said. “Gwen sent it to us last week.”