"Honoured, Miss Seton, that you should visit our humble home. How are you, sir? Take a chair. Take two chairs!!"
"Thank you very much," Elizabeth said gravely, "but may I speak to Mrs. Christie first?"
She introduced Mr. Townshend to his hostess, and then, casting him adrift on this clerical sea, she sat down by the little woman and inquired carefully about her ailments. The bronchitis had been very bad, she was told. Elizabeth would notice that she was wearing a shawl? That was because she wasn't a bit sure that she was wise in coming up to the drawing-room, which was draughty. (The Christies as a general rule sat in their dining-room, which between meals boasted of a crimson tablecover with an aspidistra in a pot in the middle of the table.) Besides, gas fires never did agree with her—nasty, headachy things, that burned your face and left your feet cold. (Mrs. Christie glared vindictively as she spoke at the two imitation yule logs that burned drearily on the hearth.) But on the whole she was fairly well, but feeling a bit upset to-night. Well, not upset exactly, but flustered, for she had a great bit of news. Could Elizabeth guess?
Elizabeth said she could not.
"Look at Kirsty," Mrs. Christie said.
Elizabeth looked across to where Kirsty sat beside a thin little clergyman, and noticed she looked rather unusually nice. She was not only more carefully dressed, but her face looked different; not so sallow, almost as though it had been lit up from inside.
"Kirsty looks very well," she said, "very happy. Has anything specially nice happened?"
"She's just got engaged to the minister beside her," Mrs. Christie whispered hoarsely.
The whisper penetrated through the room, and Kirsty and her fiancé blushed deeply.
"Kirsty! Engaged!" gasped Elizabeth.