“Why, you silly goose, Ellen!” Her friend, Mrs. Deverence (out from town for the anniversary), took her by the shoulders with an amused little laugh. “Getting sentimental over a bunch of wild flowers!—it was merely a maid who fixed them, wasn’t it?”
Mrs. Verplanck turned sharply to answer. Then she remembered the words had a quoted ring. “Merely a maid,” she assented, mechanically, but in spite of her, two more big drops of sentiment fell upon the daisies.
“It’s a good thing for you you’re going back to town to-morrow,” declared Mrs. Deverence, briskly. “Another week of this morbid country atmosphere——”
“It isn’t a morbid atmosphere,” contradicted Ellen, impolitely.
“With nobody in the house except a servant and your husband,” went on the friend calmly. “Tell me, Ellen, hasn’t it seemed awfully odd, having Knollys about, all the time?”
“About, all the time?” Ellen’s amazement was too frank to be mistrusted. “Why, my dear Sheila, I’ve scarcely seen him. You see, he weeds the strawberry-patch every morning, while I’m dusting and doing the flowers, and then after lunch I have my sewing and practising—yes, actually I’ve managed two hours a day!—and Knollys always gets through his mail and goes to the village to wire for stock quotations—why, we’ve never been as busy in our lives.”
“Um-m! And to-morrow it all ends——” Mrs. Deverence sat down very practically to breakfast.
“To-morrow—yes, I suppose so.” Ellen sat down too—as though one chair had been pushed from under her. “We go back—to the hotel to-morrow.”
“And I see you’re up for the Four-in-Hand.” Mrs. Deverence’s manner added to itself blitheness as the men came in. The change in attitude had never before struck Ellen as artificial.
“Yes—a regular club-gourmand she’s getting to be, eh, Knollys?” Hawley Deverence’s weighty laugh took heavy possession of the charming sunny dining-room as he slumped into his chair. “The women are usurping us, Nolly, my boy—they’re usurping us!”