“Oh, please,” said Amory, “just a minute till I’ve put my canvas out of the way—and it won’t take me three minutes to clean my palette and wash my brushes——”
She carried her wet canvas out on to the landing beyond the warped door.
If, while Dorothy swept, Amory lingered a little over her brush-washing and palette-cleaning, and then proceeded to make of the wasted paint a paper “butterfly,” she had this justification—that she swept as badly as she washed up. Moreover, she was already running over beforehand the heads of a really elevating talk she wanted to have with Cosimo on the subject of Eugenics. Cosimo was the kind of man you could talk to sanely and sensibly about these things; he could discuss them with her in the proper inquiring spirit, and without either mock modesty or a thought behind. He despised mock modesty and the thought behind as much as Amory herself despised them; he had frequently said so. That, with the knowledge that she herself was by a good deal the cleverer of the two, seemed to Amory the really satisfactory relation. They were “the best of pals.” Amory liked the expression. It was so unlike Glenerne and the leers about the aquarium corner.
Therefore, as Dorothy, sweeping, asked her how her aunt’s engagement-party had gone off, she replied with an almost indulgent laugh. Dorothy wouldn’t believe (she said) how absurd her aunt could be. Dorothy, burrowing with the broom into a corner, laughed too.
“All aunts are, my dear. (Mind your foot.) Don’t talk to me about aunts. I’ve got some, thanks. (Sorry, and I’m afraid I shall sweep all the dust on you if you stand there.) Our latest is a frightful row between Aunt Emmie, that’s the one in Calcutta, and Aunt Eliza, the one in Wales. All about some diamonds everybody’d forgotten all about, but some stupid old busybody of a bank-manager must go and turn them up, and Aunt Emmie says grandfather gave them to her, and Aunt Eliza says he gave them to her, and ... well, there you are. The less said about those diamonds the better in a family like ours, I should have said. (Oh dear, Amory, do stand somewhere else!) Cousin Clara says they’re pretty sure to be the wages of somebody’s sin. Talk about your one aunt! I’ve a dozen, half of ’em not quite right in their heads ... (Amory, if you don’t move I shall hit you with the brush!)...”
Amory moved, finished her “butterfly,” and began to cut it out with a pair of scissors.
“I’ll unpack the bananas,” she said, as Dorothy laid the broom aside.
Deftly she unpacked the bananas; skilfully she took the oranges from their tissue-paper, dropping the tissue-paper on the floor. She arranged them on a large apple-green dish, which she set on the gate-legged table; and then she stood back surveying the colour and grouping while Dorothy peppered and salted and prepared to cook the three-quarters of a pound of steak. She turned the dish this way and that, seeking fresh lights to put it in. Amory’s work was never done. Often she was busiest when she seemed most idle. She could not say to eye and brain, as Dorothy could say to mere hands, “It is finished now ... you may rest....” It was not finished even when Dorothy had set the table, cooked the steak, and made all ready for serving. There were the yellow bananas and the glowing oranges to paint in her mind, on the white cloth now instead of on the oaken board....
They dined and cleared away, and, while Dorothy washed up, Amory replaced the dish of fruit on the table, set out the biscuits and cakes on the Persian Rose plates, and made of all, with the flask of Chianti, another still-life group. Then she disposed the chairs as if by happy accident, and poked the fire. The casement looking over the river became an oblong of dim blue; the fire burnt up, and glowed on the black and sagging old ceiling; and Amory hoped that the people overhead were going to be quiet to-night.
Then, at a little after eight, there came from outside, somewhere beyond the Pier Hotel, the sound of a baritone voice. It was Walter Wyron, singing “The Raggle-taggle Gipsies.” Amory started up.