“Chicken croquettes. I like things handed!” she pleaded.
“Do you? I don’t. I like to have what I am eating in front of me. You won’t take any, Phœbe? Oh, very well. You want to get scraggier than you are. A lean wife is a standing reproach to a fellow.”
“Fibby is afraid of spoiling her fashionable figure!” observed Mrs. Poynder, drawing herself up, to show her own to the best advantage. It was of a certain solid merit, not to be gainsaid.
With these, and other family amenities, was the time of dining enlivened. Mrs. Elles’ attitude was one of faintly raised eyebrows, but she did not allow herself to say anything to-day, that a heroine might regret. She was not generally so circumspect. As soon as dinner was over, she rose and followed Mrs. Poynder out of the room. Mrs. Poynder liked to go first, and she was allowed to do so when no one was there. Mortimer Elles, who was by no means in a bad humour, moved his chair a little to make way for his wife.
“Do you call that a gown?” he said, fingering a fold of the shining satin. “And pray, what may that have cost me?”
“Don’t!” she said, drawing it away.
“Surely I may touch it if I am to have the privilege of paying for it?”
“It is not very nice of you, Mortimer, to remind me that I haven’t a penny of my own, and must depend on your bounty!”
“And a good job, too!” he said, laughing; he was certainly in a very good humour. “It’s the only hold I’ve got on you—the only way I have of keeping you in order.”
“Mortimer—I am not a child!”