“Good mornin’, ma’am,” she said. “I was beginnin’ to worrit about the food. Cookin’s cookin’, I always says, and doin’ things to rags is ’nother thing. But you’re justin time, which is more than Mr. Maddison usually is.”
“Mrs. Witchout keeps me in grand order, Marian, and if you want anything while you’re here, don’t ask me for it—I’m not boss of the show.”
“That’s the way he always runs on; don’t take anynoticeofhim, I don’t. Would you like to go up to your room? It’s upstairs—if youcancall these stepladdery things stairs. This way, m’m.”
Mrs. Witchout led the way upstairs, Maddison holding Marian back a minute to whisper to her:
“By the way, you’re my sister! I’ve had a bed made up in the studio for myself. Don’t give the show away.”
Marian laughed as she ran up, and Maddison turned into the living room. Everything was ready, the table neat, cozy and pretty, a covered dish and the plates warming by the fire, which blazed up cheerily; the lattice windows were thrown wide open and the sun streamed in warmly.
“You don’t look much alike,” said Mrs. Witchout, coming in. “If you takes arter your father she must take arter her mother, and a ’andsome couple they must ’ave been, I’m thinkin’.”
“Don’t try to flatter me, Mrs. Witchout,” Maddison answered, with a laugh, as he sat down on the window seat, watching her picking up the dish with the assistance of her apron. “It’s no use your coming over me and you mustn’t spoil her with compliments, though the biggest would have been to have told her that she is nearly as good-looking as I am.”
“Lawks!” was Mrs. Witchout’s comment.
“What a jolly little room!” exclaimed Marian, pausing in the doorway and looking round. “And what flowers! And the windows, wide open, just as if it was springtime. It feels like it.”