“Jack's learning to be superintendent,” said Mrs. Wilmington, lifting her teasing voice to make him hear her in the hall, “and he's been spending the whole morning here.”
In the richly appointed dining-room—a glitter of china and glass and a mass of carven oak—the table was laid for two.
“Put another plate, Norah,” said Mrs. Wilmington carelessly.
There was bouillon in teacups, chicken cutlets in white sauce, and luscious strawberries.
“What a cook!” cried Mrs. Munger, over the cutlets.
“Yes, she's a treasure; I don't deny it,” said Mrs. Wilmington.
X.
By the end of May most of the summer folk had come to their cottages in South Hatboro'. One after another the ladies called upon Annie. They all talked to her of the Social Union, and it seemed to be agreed that it was fully in train, though what was really in train was the entertainment to be given at Mrs. Munger's for the benefit of the Union; the Union always dropped out of the talk as soon as the theatricals were mentioned.
When Annie went to return these visits she scarcely recognised even the shape of the country, once so familiar to her, of which the summer settlement had possessed itself. She found herself in a strange world—a world of colonial and Queen Anne architecture, where conscious lines and insistent colours contributed to an effect of posing which she had never seen off the stage. But it was not a very large world, and after the young trees and hedges should have grown up and helped to hide it, she felt sure that it would be a better world. In detail it was not so bad now, but the whole was a violent effect of porches, gables, chimneys, galleries, loggias, balconies, and jalousies, which nature had not yet had time to palliate.