"We heard a great deal about Mrs. Picture, my lady." Sister Nora thought her name might be Mrs. Pitcher, though odd. "I could hardly say myself," said Granny Marrable diffidently.
Gwen speculated. "Pilcher, or Pilchard, perhaps! It couldn't be Picture. What did he tell you about her?"
"Oh dear—a many things! Mrs. Picture had been out to sea, in a ship. But she will be very old, too, Mrs. Picture. I call to mind now, that the dear child couldn't tell me from Mrs. Picture when he first came, by reason of the white hair. So she may be nigh my own age."
Gwen was looking puzzled over something in the letter. "'Out to sea in a ship!'" she repeated. "I wonder, has 'decks' anything to do with that?... N-n-no!—it must be 'desk.' It can't be anything else." It was, of course, Mrs. Prichard's literal acceptance of Dave's pronunciation. But it had a nautical air for the moment, and seemed somehow in keeping with that old lady's marine experience.
Widow Thrale then came in, bearing an armful of purchases from the village. With her were two convalescents; who must have nearly done convalescing, they shouted so. The ogress abated them when she found her granny had august company, and removed them to sup apart with an anæmic eight-year-old little girl; in none of whom Sister Nora showed more than a lukewarm interest, comparing them all disparagingly with Dave. In fact, she was downright unkind to the anæmic sample, likening her to knuckle of veal. It was true that this little girl had a stye in her eye, and two corkscrew ringlets, and lacked complete training in the use of the pocket-handkerchief. All the ogress seemed to die out of Widow Thrale in her presence, and the visitors avoided contact with her studiously. She seemed malignant, too, driving her chin like a knife into the nuque of one of the small boys, who kicked her shins justifiably. However, they all went away to convalesce elsewhere, as soon as their guardian the ogress had transplanted from a side-table a complete tea-possibility; a tray that might be likened to Minerva, springing fully armed from the head of Jove. "Your ladyship will take tea," said Granny Marrable, in a voice that betrayed a doubt whether the Norman Conquest could consistently take tea with Gurth the Swineherd.
Her ladyship had no such misgiving. But an aristocratic prejudice dictated a reservation:—"Only it must be poured straight off before it gets like ink.... Oh, stop!—it's too black already. A little hot water, thank you!" And then Mrs. Thrale, in cold blood, actually stood her Rockingham teapot on the hob; to become an embittered deadly poison, a slayer of the sleep of all human creatures above a certain standard of education. When all other class distinctions are abolished, this one will remain, like the bones of the Apteryx.
"We'll pay a visit to Dave," said Sister Nora. "Perhaps he'll introduce us to Mrs. Picture." Nothing hung on the conversation, and Mrs. Picture, always under that name—there being indeed none to correct it—cropped up and vanished as often as Dave was referred to. One knows how readily the distortions of speech of some lovable little man or maid will displace proper names, whose owners usually surrender them without protest. That Granny Marrowbone and Mrs. Picture were thereafter accepted as the working designations of the old twins was entirely owing to Dave Wardle.
"Mrs. Picture lives upstairs, it seems," said Gwen, referring to the letter. "I wonder you saw nothing of her, Cousin Chloe."
"Why should I, dear? I never went upstairs. I heard of her because the little sister-poppet wanted to take the doll I gave her to show to a person the old prizefighter spoke of as the old party two-pair-up. But I thought the name was Bird."
"A prizefighter!" said Gwen. "How interesting! We must pay a visit to the Wardle family. Is it a very awful place they live in?" This question was asked in the hope of an affirmative answer, Gwen having been promised exciting and terrible experiences of London slums.