It was not far past Lucy’s early dinner-hour. So she meant to hurry home. She invited Florence to come also, but Florence said no, she would get lunch near at hand, and then go straight home to dress for afternoon calls.
“I don’t see that you couldn’t do the same if you came with us,” Lucy urged, for she had a hospitable soul, and it hurt her to part from her sister directly she had used her, and when she was willing to be useful again on the morrow. On the other hand, had she gone with Florence to a restaurant, she knew that Florence would not only have refused to be her guest, but would have insisted that Lucy and Hugh should be hers, and would have “treated” them to all sorts of luxuries in a way which always made Lucy wish she could set the same money going in other directions.
But Florence was deaf to all persuasions. To own the truth, she felt relieved to get rid of her sister, for, as she said to herself, “the worry and the bad atmosphere of the last two hours had made her feel so ‘exhausted’ that she meant to recuperate with champagne, and she knew Lucy would be shocked.”
Lucy too, on reaching home, found herself more weary than she would have been after a hard day’s work. However, as the “light” had gone, there was nothing very pressing to do, and she went to bed early—very soon after Hugh’s usual bed-time.
Next afternoon the promised message from Florence duly arrived—
“Everything all right. She will enter service to-morrow before noon.”
“Before noon” proved to be directly after ten o’clock in the morning, when Jessie Morison presented herself as comely and comfortable as before. In expectation of her arrival, Mrs. Challoner had dispensed with the charwoman, and had busied herself trying to give the kitchen its former trim aspect, already somewhat dimmed in the hands of the muddling, untrained worker. After giving a few necessary instructions, she delivered up the lower regions to their new ruler, and betook herself to her sketching. After dinner she would devote the rest of the day to household explanations.
The simple midday meal almost startled Lucy by the savouriness of its preparation, and the daintiness of its arrangement. It was evident that Jessie Morison knew her business. Under her touch the fire glowed into genial brightness. Her skilful shake gave the sofa cushions a tempting rotundity. She received all her mistress’s directions with the masterly comprehension of one who knows the ground already. By tea-time, it seemed as if she had been in the house for months, and when, before retiring to rest, Mrs. Challoner went down into the kitchen to ascertain whether all outlets were properly fastened up, she thought she had never seen a pleasanter picture of middle-aged industry and worth. Jessie Morison sat in the arm-chair, over whose back she had thrown a Rob-Roy plaid. She was busily knitting a long grey stocking. The lamp was drawn up beside her, and its light fell full on the smiling face she turned to her mistress. She wore a grey woollen shawl pinned across her comfortable bosom by a Scotch pebble brooch, and the cap surmounting her silvered hair was no frivolous fly-away dab of mock lace, but an efficient affair whose neat frills were the product of honest laundry-work and goffering irons. It actually came into Lucy’s mind that she might almost be thankful that Pollie had departed in quest of personal happiness, since Charlie might be easily assured that his dear ones and his home were safer than ever in the charge of this matronly, motherly person.
The days passed on. Lucy found herself free to work with an unencumbered mind. The new servant proved as pleasant as efficient. She was not a woman who talked much, but when addressed, she always responded cheerily, expressed herself nicely, and frequently made shrewd remarks, well set off by her Scottish dialect. Lucy was especially touched by the real right feeling she showed in any observation which glanced towards the absent “master” whom she had never seen. She felt that it was a comfort to have in the house this experienced woman, who had known a wife’s love and a widow’s loss. There seemed a human bond between them in the thick clumsy little Bible with the Scotch metrical Psalms, which lay on the kitchen dresser, its fly-leaf inscribed “To Jessie Milne, from her respectful friend Alexr. Morison,” with a date of the courting days five and twenty years ago.
Christmas drew near. Lucy had wondered a little over Christmas. She felt sure the Brands would invite her and Hugh to their festive board, but she did not want to go there. She knew well enough how the Brands kept Christmas, for she and Charlie had dined with them on one or two Christmas days when they were first married. There would be a great dinner-party—a chef hired for the occasion. With the exception of one or two fawning familiars of the Brand household—and especially obnoxious to Lucy—the guests would be anybody who was in special favour at the time, many of them financial or fashionable acquaintances of the last twelve months. These people would pick over and waste the delicious food placed before them, they would drink much costly wine. There would be toasts, which would range from the last “Company” in which Jem Brand was interested, down to our “Absent Friends,” which he would certainly propose if Lucy were there. There would follow a little confused music in the drawing-room, overmastered by everybody talking at once and yet saying nothing. Then before the party broke up, they would all stand round with linked hands, and these people, who had not a memory, an outlook, or even an interest in common (unless it might be in a “Company”), would ask in London tones, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot?” singing—