“I’m so glad you’ve come,” said Aunt Jerry to Cosimo. “Mrs. Deschamps is coming; George will meet her after church; and Miss Crebbin (do you remember Miss Crebbin?)—she’s bringing her young man. But I ought to say that our lunch is really our dinner on Sundays because of the girls’ afternoon off. Well, and now tell me how you are.”
She was fresh as a rose, and talked as if she and Cosimo had been old friends. Cosimo remembered the joke of Mrs. ’Ill, the plumber, Mr. Wellcome, and the chimney-sweep. Only for a moment had Aunt Jerry glanced at Cosimo’s suit of tweeds. She had heard of Cosimo’s bereavement, but, after all, a loss can be felt as deeply in tweeds as in anything else, and the glance had seemed to admit that perhaps it wasn’t altogether a bad thing that the old custom of extravagant funerals, often at the expense of the needs of the living, was dying out. “We must all go sometime,” her short silence seemed to say, “and those who follow us must take up the burdens we leave.” Perhaps it was not all burden either. Aunt Jerry had forgotten the precise number of acres, but she remembered that Cosimo was now “eligible.”
Aunt Jerry was telling Cosimo how all at sea Amory had seemed during the past weeks, when Mr. Massey arrived with Mrs. Deschamps. They were followed a few minutes later by Miss Crebbin and her young man, a Mr. Allport. And Mrs. Deschamps, too, greeted Cosimo as quite an old friend.
“I shall never, never forget that wedding day, Mr. Pratt!” she exclaimed vivaciously. “That cake—the wretches! But they’re always up to something, scaring you out of your wits with a jam-splash on the tablecloth or a spill of ink on your book—you’ve seen them, Mr. Pratt; they’re a penny, and I’ve had dreadful turns with them! But I simply cannot call you ‘Mr. Pratt.’ It isn’t like Glenerne here. I admit it’s best to be on the safe side there, but at Oasthouse View we’re a family party—aren’t we, George? And don’t I come on Sundays till you’re sick of the sight of me and say, ‘Here’s that nuisance of a Nellie again?’ He needn’t shake his head,” the bright little widow continued to Cosimo; “Geraldine thinks we go to church together, but really I’m making love to him—aren’t I, George?”
“Yes—yes, yes, yes,” Mr. Massey hissed softly over his teeth, entering into the joke and smiling amiably about him.
And Mrs. Deschamps confided to Cosimo in a stage whisper that it was already arranged that she was to be “Number Two.”
They lunched in the panelled room beneath Aunt Jerry’s drawing-room, Amory and Cosimo on one side of the table facing Miss Crebbin and her young man on the other. Cosimo presently became aware that this was a quite amusing variation of the joke of Jellies, Dorothy, the plumber, etc. It lacked the boisterousness of that day when Mr. Wellcome had thrust him into Amory’s arms, but it had a subtle flavour of its own. Cosimo had only one uneasiness, which was that Amory was perhaps not well enough in health to extract the last particle of savour from all this taking-for-granted. She sat next to Mr. Allport, but said little. She ate hungrily of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and quite agreed when Mr. Allport said what “an A1 little pitch Oasthouse View was.” Then Mr. Allport talked water-rates and gas-fittings to Mr. Massey. He could be seen making mental notes of fixtures and furniture against the day when he and his young woman should set up together for themselves. He seemed, too, to be advising Cosimo also to be picking up wrinkles in good time. Cosimo was secretly glad that Mr. Wellcome was not there. His robustiousness would have spoiled the quiet and artistic character of the comedy.
And again he hoped that Amory was not missing anything.
Then the ladies ascended to the drawing-room again, and Mr. Massey, who knew perfectly well everything that the sideboard did and did not contain, pretended to be in doubt, and “thought there ought to be a little port somewhere.” He found it, and the three men sat, Mr. Allport again talking of cupboards and drains, but obviously thinking that ... but let Cosimo and Amory tell the rest.
“My—dear!” Amory broke out when, at half-past three, they passed the “Doves” again. “Did you ever!”