"You will be more careful in future, Amelia, won't you?" suggested Bessie mildly. She turned to her father, and spoke wistfully. "Perhaps Aunt Julia and Uncle Ted had better come out here—in the garden," she suggested.
"I will not see them," said Mr. Meggison. "I am in no mood to see anyone; I should probably insult my sister, to begin with. I dislike her as much as I dislike her absurd prosperity."
"Don't ask me to meet 'em," said Aubrey, making for the little gate in the wall. "Aunt Julia always asks a chap what he's doin'—as though earnin' your livin' was about the only blessed thing you'd got to do in this world."
"I'd be glad if you'd stop and see them, Aubrey," pleaded Bessie; then to her father she added slyly—"It will be so much more dignified if you stop and meet them, father."
"Perhaps it will; I will put up with them on your account, my child," said Mr. Meggison. "Aubrey—I command you to stay."
"Your commands don't affect me the least little bit," said Aubrey coolly, shifting his cigarette to the other corner of his mouth. "But on Bessie's account I don't mind lettin' myself be seen. Amelia—trot 'em out!"
Bessie Meggison having some idea of how these things should be done, from certain accounts she had read, or from certain things she had heard, immediately got behind the crazy table, the better to preside over that pouring out of coffee. She bravely shut her eyes to the fact that the cups did not match, and that the saucers were either too large or too small, or that the coffee-pot was a mere tin affair, blackened all up one side from contact with the fire. She waited in that proud position the coming of the unexpected guests.
Mrs. Stocker came first, looking about her with the high dignity of one who moves in a very different sphere, and who has condescended for once, in a spirit of Christian virtue, to step down among beings less fortunate. She was a large lady, holding herself very erect; the sort of person with whom you could not under any circumstances have cracked a jest. Life was a simple and a respectable thing with her; a serious matter, that could but lead in due course to a very proper and becomingly elaborate funeral. Women had been known to do remarkable things, and to get their names into books and newspapers; not so Julia Stocker. "From the moment Edward Stocker claimed my hand, I knew exactly what was going to happen to me, and I acted accordingly," was her invariable summary of the course of her life. Incidentally it may be mentioned that Mr. Edward Stocker had "a little property" and that Mrs. Stocker looked after it. Which is to say that Mr. Stocker was a mild good-tempered little man, with a partiality for convivial good company into which he rarely got.
The lady came out of the house now, looking about her somewhat disdainfully. She took Bessie's outstretched hand, and, still with her eyes searching the bare and shabby yard, touched the girl's cheek for a moment with lips that had no softness about them; performed the same ceremony with her brother Daniel; and stared at Aubrey Meggison. "I have come, brother," she said, in a voice that was in itself almost dirge-like, "to see how you are getting on."
"Very kind of you—but I'm not getting on at all," said Meggison, furtively rubbing the place on his cheek where her lips had been with his knuckles. "More than that, I don't expect to."