“Now, that’s the first decent dress I have seen you in, Fibby, for many a long day!” she observed, contemplating the plain dress of blue serge—not very new, not very smart—in which Mrs. Elles had chosen to array herself.
“I am glad you are pleased, Aunt Poynder,” replied her niece, demurely, gracefully accepting her cup of coffee from the stout, red fingers where the submerged wedding-ring, planted there by the late Mr. Poynder, glittered. Charles Elles, who could get more noise out of a cup of coffee than anybody, was drinking his and enjoying it thoroughly. Mrs. Poynder somehow contrived to knock her knife and fork together on the rim of her plate with vigour every time she took a morsel. Mortimer’s carpet slippers, and the dish of bacon which his aunt had set down by the fire to keep warm for him, stood by the fire in grotesque proximity.
“I am going to put off my dinner on the thirty-first,” Mrs. Elles announced, quietly. “Jane is going, and I couldn’t attempt it with a new parlour-maid.”
“I am glad, Fibby, to see you in such a peaceable frame of mind,” Mrs. Poynder rejoined. “Mortimer says you were fairly put out at first about his sending Jane away.”
“So I was, Aunt, but——”
“Ye’re quite right, Fibby, to take it calm. Husbands must have their way. I never thought much of the girl myself; she’s lazy and wears far too much fringe. Besides, a man must be master in his own house, and if he can’t send away his own housemaid when it pleases him——”
“Yes, Aunt.” Mrs. Elles was playing at meekness, and the sensation was so unusual that she found it rather amusing so far. Mrs. Poynder could not make it out at all.
“Are ye ill, my dear?” she enquired, with some show of solicitude. “To look at ye, I should say that your digestion was not in just apple-pie order.”
“I am all right, Aunt,” replied Mrs. Elles, with forced composure, stamping her foot, however, under the table. Her colour was high, as Mrs. Poynder had remarked, but very clear and bright, and she looked quite ten years younger. Her aunt continued to make little onslaughts of this kind on her through breakfast, but she did not retort. Her lips formed themselves every now and again into the words, “I am going—I am going—I am going!” as a kind of secret satisfaction. When her husband came down, she actually got up and fetched the terribly plebeian dish of bacon from the fender and put it down in front of him. He thanked her drily.
“If you will excuse me,” she said to them all, “I will go and write some notes that have to be attended to at once.”