"Oh, how exciting. Which day? When are you expecting Mr. Elliott? Shall we be allowed to the wedding? What are you going to wear?"
It was all very curious, and not a bit like Connie.
As they jolted back to Marshington in the hot, stuffy train, Muriel looked at Connie and Delia sitting opposite her, side by side. And on Delia's thin brown face, and on Connie's plump jolly one, brooded the same expression of serene expectancy.
It was very curious indeed.
XXIV
Muriel could not forget that expression upon Delia's face. It haunted her throughout a restless, interminable night. It rose with her next morning and stared at her across the breakfast table. All the way down to the hospital she repeated, "Martin Elliott's coming home to-morrow to marry Delia." Somehow she felt that if it had been anybody else but Delia she would not have cared.
At the hospital she was cross and intolerable. She snubbed poor Rosie Harpur, who gushed to her about the beauty of Delia's face now that she was happy. When she stood behind the screen, dusting the mantelpiece in the hall outside the nurse's room, she heard their voices as they drank their eleven o'clock cup of tea.
"My dear, don't speak to Hammond unless you want your head snapped off."
"What's come over her these days? She used to be so meek and mild and now she's like a hedgehog—all claws where she isn't prickly." That was Nina Farrell, whom Muriel had liked.
"Sour grapes, I should think. Sick that her little friend, Delia, has got off at last, and they say that Connie's clicked with a young farmer up in the North Riding. Muriel's just getting to be a thorough-going cross old maid."