“Meg knows—Meg and me knows,” cried Gervase from the other end.
“I must request,” said Patty, “Margaret Osborne, that you will not make my husband forget, with your jokes, what day it is. You mayn’t think it, perhaps, for my poor dear mother-in-law was not very kind to me—but I feel it to be a very solemn day. And you may be very witty and very clever, though you don’t show it to me—but I won’t have laughing and nonsense at my table on poor dear Lady Piercey’s funeral day.”
What was Margaret to do? She could not defend herself from so grotesque an accusation. She looked up with some quick words on her lips, but did not say them. It was intolerable, but it was at the same time ludicrous; a ridiculous jest, and yet the most horribly, absurdly serious catastrophe in the world.
“The laughing seems all on your husband’s side,” said Colonel Piercey, unable to refrain.
“Oh!” said Patty, fixing upon him a broad stare: and then she, too, permitted herself a little laugh. “It’s the strangest thing,” she said, “and I can’t help seeing it’s ridiculous—though laughing is not in my mind, however it may be in other people’s, on such a day—here’s a gentleman sitting at my table, and everybody knows him but me.”
“I don’t know him,” cried Gervase, “not from Adam; unless it’s Gerald Piercey, the soldier fellow that mother was so full of before I went off to get married: though nobody knew I was going to get married,” he said, with a chuckle, “except little Osy, that gave me—— I say, where’s little Osy, Meg?”
“I hope,” said Patty severely, “that children are not in the habit of being brought down here after dinner as they are in some places. It’s such bad style, and, I’m thankful to say, it’s going out of fashion. It’s a thing as I could not put up with here.”
“Send some one upstairs,” said Margaret, in a low voice to the footman who was standing by her, “to say that Master Osy is not to come down.”
“What are you saying to the servant? I don’t want to be disagreeable,” said Patty, “but I object to a servant being sent away from his business. Oh, if the child comes usually, let him come, but it must be for the last time.”
“If I may go myself,” said Margaret, half rising, “that will be the most expeditious way.”