“He’s cultivating the airs of the country squire,” she thought. “I wish he wouldn’t.”
He took the innumerable bags with which she travelled and scattered them among the attendants. He even tried to induce her to take his arm to the dog-cart, but this honour she stoutly refused.
“Now, will you come round to this side and I’ll help you up. Your luggage will come on afterwards with the pony.”
He was managing everything in a self-confident and masterful fashion; Miss Ley noticed that marriage had dispelled the shyness which had been in him rather an attractive feature. He was becoming bluff and hearty. Also he was filling out. Prosperity and a knowledge of greater importance had broadened his back and straightened his shoulders; he was quite three inches more round the chest than when she had first known him, and his waist had proportionately increased.
“If he goes on developing in this way,” she thought, “the good man will be colossal by the time he’s forty.”
“Of course, Aunt Polly,” he said, boldly dropping the respectful Miss Ley, which hitherto he had invariably used, though his new relative was not a woman whom most men would have ventured to treat familiarly. “Of course it’s all rot about your leaving us in a week; you must stay a couple of months at least.”
“It’s very good of you, dear Edward,” replied Miss Ley drily, “but I have other engagements.”
“Then you must break them; I can’t have people leave my house immediately they come.”
Miss Ley raised her eyebrows and smiled; was it his house already? Dear me!
“My dear Edward,” she answered, “I never stay anywhere longer than two days—the first day I talk to people, the second I let them talk to me, and the third I go.... I stay a week at hotels so as to go en pension, and get my washing properly aired.”