They reached the lane leading to Orchards Corner, and on coming to the white fence sighted Mrs. Carfax sitting in the garden, with the inevitable knitting in her lap. Canterton was taken in and introduced.
“Please don’t get up.”
Mrs. Carfax was coy and a little fluttered.
“Do sit down, Mr. Canterton. I feel that I must thank you for your great kindness to my daughter. I am sure that both she and I are very grateful.”
“So am I, Mrs. Carfax.”
“Indeed, Mr. Canterton?”
“For the very fine work your daughter is going to do for me. I was in doubt as to who to get, when suddenly she appeared.”
Mrs. Carfax bowed in her chair like some elderly queen driving through London.
“I am so glad you like Eve’s paintings. I think she paints quite nicely. Of course she studied a great deal at the art schools, and she would have exhibited, only we could not afford all that we should have liked to afford. It is really most fortunate for Eve that you should be so pleased with her painting.”
Her placid sing-song voice, with its underlining of the “sos” the “quites,” and the “mosts,” made Canterton think of certain maiden aunts who had tried to spoil him when he was a child. Mother and daughter were in strange contrast. The one all fire, sensitive aliveness, curiosity, colour; the other flat, sweetly foolish, toneless, apathetic.