“Has Miss de Sor done with it already?” Miss Ladd asked.
“She won’t read it, ma’am. She says the leaves smell of tobacco-smoke.”
Miss Ladd turned to Alban, and shook her head with an air of good-humored reproof. “I know who has been reading that book last!” she said.
Alban pleaded guilty, by a look. He was the only master in the school who smoked. As Mrs. Ellmother passed him, on her way out, he noticed the signs of suffering in her wasted face.
“That woman is surely in a bad state of health,” he said. “Has she seen the doctor?”
“She flatly refuses to consult the doctor,” Miss Ladd replied. “If she was a stranger, I should meet the difficulty by telling Miss de Sor (whose servant she is) that Mrs. Ellmother must be sent home. But I cannot act in that peremptory manner toward a person in whom Emily is interested.”
From that moment Mrs. Ellmother became a person in whom Alban was interested. Later in the day, he met her in one of the lower corridors of the house, and spoke to her. “I am afraid the air of this place doesn’t agree with you,” he said.
Mrs. Ellmother’s irritable objection to being told (even indirectly) that she looked ill, expressed itself roughly in reply. “I daresay you mean well, sir—but I don’t see how it matters to you whether the place agrees with me or not.”
“Wait a minute,” Alban answered good-humoredly. “I am not quite a stranger to you.”
“How do you make that out, if you please?”