No, thought Sarah, Mary would know nothing about motor-cars and, knowing nothing, would decide that there was nothing to know.
Tilly, Richard's wife, helped herself to a third cheese-cake and wistfully regarded the netted frill of a doily on the plate before her.
"Do you get these doilies up yourself, Mary?" she asked. "I always find netting goes so badly when you iron it. I do wish you'd tell me what to do."
"Yes. We do all our own laundry work. I ironed those myself. It's simply a matter of careful starching, and then pulling them away from under the iron."
Possibly she was right. Mary was a good housekeeper. Sarah impatiently speared a pat of butter and began to spread it on her bread. Was it never possible for half an hour to pass without some one asking her advice? And accepting it when given as though it were as reliable as the Bible? No wonder the girl's head was turned. And really there was nothing so extraordinary about her. Why, she wasn't even good-looking!
Yet, watching her tall figure, broad-shouldered and long-necked, her wide mouth with its faint indication of complacency, and the sudden upward thrust of her chin when she wished to emphasize a statement, Sarah knew well enough wherein lay Mary's attraction for John. Her finely shaped hands were unusually muscular. Every easy motion of her arms or body suggested that behind it lay a reserve of strength. Her gentleness seemed to be compounded of restricted energy rather than weak emotion. All the qualities which John had admired in Sarah he found softened by youth in Mary.
Sarah looked towards the head of the table where John sat behind the chickens. He was a fool to sit like that quietly carving or looking up occasionally to catch Mary's eye with his shy smile. Why couldn't he get up and say something for himself? Once he got started he had as many wits as any of them. It was only because Mary was convinced he couldn't talk that he never did.
"John," Sarah asked suddenly, "why didn't you show that shorthorned bull of yours at York? You know there was nothing to beat it from the North Riding."
"We are not going to begin showing yet," interposed Mary, ignoring Uncle Dickie's unfinished anecdote. "It's too expensive. We're going to start when we get a little capital laid by."
"I asked John," commented Sarah, and said no more. But she mentally registered Mary's spasmodic extravagance over the men's feast and her meanness over the show as another grievance against her.