“Ha, that touched her up!” he muttered.
When she was half up the stairs she stopped and stamped:
“How dare he say—say with a laugh what I won’t even dare to think!”
However, she was soon back again in her yellow twilight, but sitting this time, and with a big bundle of coarse flannel in her hand that she began to stitch with demure diligence.
“What in the name of fortune is that!” said Strange, after taking steady stock of it.
“I don’t really know, I got it in Eliza’s room—I think it is a jelly-bag, it’s just like one I once made for Mrs. Fellowes, and spoiled disgracefully. I sewed up the wrong end!”
Strange investigated it with much interest.
“My good girl,” he said at last, “do you know what you are doing? You are sewing an old woman’s petticoat.”
He gave a laugh that reached Tolly, as he sat varnishing boots downstairs.
“Bless ’em, the pair of ’em,” he remarked, “and as ’appy together as if they lived in four rooms! Queer, too! as the aristocracy’s mostly gone to the dogs in the domestic line!”