Mrs. Jenkinson’s amazement, as she espied them coming up the path to the house, was a thing by itself. It was such that she set her door ajar that she might see them pass through the hall. She was all of a twitter, she said afterwards. And poor Jane and poor Sarah—who were out! What a miss they were having! It was not thrice in the twelve months that his lordship brought a lady to the house.
A greater miss, indeed, it turned out, than she thought. For to her gratification Lord Audley tapped at her door. He pushed it open. “Mrs. Jenkinson,” he said pleasantly, “this is my cousin, Miss Audley, who is good enough to take a cup of your excellent tea with me, if you will make it. She has walked in from the Gatehouse.”
Mrs. Jenkinson was a combination of an eager, bright-eyed bird and a stout, short lady in dove-colored silk—if such a thing can be imagined; and the soul of good-nature. She took Mary by both hands, beamed upon her, and figuratively took her to her bosom. “A little cake and wine, my dear,” she chirruped. “After a long walk! And then tea. To be sure, my dear! I knew your father, Mr. Peter Audley, a dear, good gentleman. You would like to wash your hands? Yes, my dear! Not that you are not—and his lordship will wait for us upstairs. Yes, there’s a step. I knew your father, to be sure, to be sure. A new brush, my dear. And now will you let me—not that your sweet face needs any ornament! Yes, I talk too much—but, there, my love, when you are as old——”
She was a simple soul, and because her tongue rarely stopped she might have been thought to see nothing. But women, unlike men, can do two things at once, and little escaped her twinkling spectacles. As she told her sister later, “My dear, I saw it was spoons from the first. She sparkled all over, bless her innocent heart! And he, if she had been a duchess, could not have waited on her more elegant—well, elegantly, Sally, if you like, but we can’t all talk like you. They thought, the dear creatures, that I saw nothing; but once he said something too low for me to hear and she looked up at him, and her pretty eyes were like stars. And he looked—well, Sally, I could not tell you how he looked!”
“I am not sure that it would be proper,” the spinster demurred.
“Ah, well, it was as pretty a thing as you’d wish to see,” the good creature ran on, drumming with her fingers on the lap of her silk gown. “And she, bless her, I dare say she was all of a twitter, but she didn’t show it. No airs or graces either—but there, an Audley has no need! Why, God bless me, I said something about the Princess and what company she must have seen, and what a change for her, and she up and said—I am sure I loved her for it!—that she had been no more than a governess! My dear, an Audley a governess! I fancied my lord wasn’t quite pleased, and very natural! But when a man is spoons——”
“My dear sister!”
“Vulgar? Well, perhaps so, I know I run on, but gentle or simple, they’re the same when they’re in love! And Jane will be glad to hear that she took two pieces of the sultana and two cups of tea, and he watching every piece she put in her mouth, and she coloring up, once or twice, so that it did my heart good to see them, the pretty dears. Jane will be pleased. And there might have been nothing but seed cake in the house. I shall remember more presently, but I was in such a twitter!”
“What did she call him?” Miss Sarah asked.
“To be sure, my dear, that was what I was going to tell you! I listened, and not a single thing did she call him. But once, when he gave her some cake, I heard him call her Mary, for all the world as if it was a bit of sugar in his mouth. And there came a kind of quiver over her pretty face, and she looked at her plate as much as to say it was a new thing. And I said to myself ‘Philip and Mary’—out of the old school-books you know, but who they were I don’t remember. But it’s my opinion,” Mrs. Jenkinson continued, rubbing her nose with the end of her spectacles, “that he had spoken just before they came in, Sally.”