Lucy wrote to Wilfrid Somerset, and by return of post came his reply, thanking her for “the sacrifice she was making for her friends,” and adding, “I had expected to sit alone this year.”
Then Lucy remembered a young lad of fifteen or sixteen whom some country friend had introduced to Charlie, who had found him employment in the office of his firm. He had had no friends when he came to London, and he had now been in London only three or four months. So she sent him an invitation, and got a prompt, prim little reply. He was a shy boy and did not much care for the thought of a dinner-party, but he had been thinking “it would be very dull at Christmas,” and he knew, too, that his mother in Lancashire would spend a happier Christmas if she knew he was made welcome in a friendly house.
Florence did not put in an appearance at her sister’s house till two days before Christmas, when she came to say that, of course, Lucy and Hugh were coming to her, and she had only called to mention that dinner would be half-an-hour earlier than it had hitherto been. She cried out with deprecation, and even anger, to find that Lucy had already made her own arrangements. Who would have thought of such a thing? She had not sent her invitation earlier simply because she thought it would be understood as a matter of course. She had told two or three of her expected guests that they would meet her sister. What would they think? And what a queer creature Lucy was to wilfully choose the depressing society of a superannuated teacher, a deformed pedant, and a country bumpkin. There was no accounting for tastes.
Lucy was glad to divert her sister’s ire by thanking her for her expedition to Willesden.
“It was you, Florence,” she said, “who have helped me to do what Charlie and I used to do together. Unless I had secured that nice Mrs. Morison, I could not have ventured on my little dinner-party. You have not told me yet what sort of interview you had with her people.”
“Oh, well enough,” answered Mrs. Brand evasively. “It was a poor little place. I should not say they are well off. If they asked her for a visit, I expect they got something off her.”
“I believe she had a little legacy,” Lucy replied. “So if she wanted rest and change, nothing would be more natural than to visit relatives to whom a little board money would be helpful. But you seemed quite satisfied, Florence. You thought they were respectable.”
“Oh, yes, for working people. He is a plumber, as you know by his card, but in a very small way. He’s this woman’s cousin, you know. I didn’t see him, I saw his wife. She told over again what the woman herself told us at the registry office; and when I asked one or two questions about the woman herself, she seemed hesitating, and I began to get suspicious till she said, ‘I shouldn’t like you to think we were wanting to get rid of Jessie, poor body.’ Then I understood why her assurances were not too gushing. She said, ‘Jessie, poor body, had just set her heart on coming to the nice young lady with the pretty little boy.’ Oh, it’s all right. Don’t expect too much. Then you won’t be disappointed.”
“Well, she has been with me nearly two months now,” said Lucy, “and she has come up to all my hopes.”
Mrs. Brand threw her sister a glance of indulgent disdain.