“Have you been calling at our place?” asked Mrs. Challoner. “Didn’t Pollie invite you to await my return? She knew I would not be much later than this.”
“Oh, yes, she asked me to wait. ‘Her mistress would not like to miss Mrs. Brand,’” said the lady, evidently mimicking Pollie’s tone. “She was civil enough. I did sit down for a few minutes; but, as it was plain there was some cast-iron rule against my getting upstairs to see Charlie——”
Mrs. Challoner interrupted. “I had told her no visitors were to be admitted during my absence,” she said, “and she knows that when I am at home I allow nobody to go upstairs, not even Charlie’s great chum, Wilfrid Somerset, without my going too. Charlie is so lively and energetic that unless I am there to intervene and put on the brake, he would take to delivering orations, and then in a moment all that he has regained might be lost.”
“Well, I thought you might have made an exception of me,” remarked Mrs. Brand. “You might have credited me with some sense, seeing that I am your own sister—your only relative in London; it seemed hard to find myself shut out by a servant.”
“I could not know you would call, Florence,” said Mrs. Challoner very gently. She might have added, “since you have not called for more than a week,” but she refrained, partly because she did not wish to reproach, and partly because she was by no means sure that under any circumstances would she have made an exception of Florence Brand.
“It does not matter,” Mrs. Brand answered. “I don’t suppose either of us lost much. But if Charlie is so weak and so unfit to take care of himself, it’s a bad outlook for you, poor dear, and you are worn to a thread paper already.”
“Won’t you turn back with me, and have a cup of tea with us?” invited the younger lady.
“No, thanks,” said Mrs. Brand. “Mr. Brand does not like me to be out alone after dark, and already it will be dark before I get home. No, never mind; I’ve heard how Charlie is and I’ve seen you and the boy, and, by the way, Lucy, through having been left so much with Pollie, I do believe little Hugh is catching her horrid Essex accent.”
“Well, then he must let it go again!” retorted Mrs. Challoner with some spirit.
More than once she had silenced a reflection that her sister, with her well appointed nursery and her lady “mother’s help,” with no duty beyond attendance on the two little Brands, both older than Hugh, might have invited a visit from her nephew while his father lay at death’s door, and his mother and her solitary servant wrestled with sick nursing and housewifery. She had said to herself that Florence had not reflected on the struggle it was, and would have been quite ready to give help if she had been asked for it. But that could not be, though Lucy had conquered her insurgent independence sufficiently to give one or two broad hints, which had fallen dead. Yet it did seem hard that Florence, so slow to consider, should be so quick to criticise!