"Oho! It's the girls, is it? And what do you expect to get for them out of all this fussification, eh?" He stood in the doorway now between the two rooms, smiling down at her, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "Are you going to marry Connie off to the vicar?"
"You needn't pretend to be stupid when you aren't," snapped Mrs. Hammond. When she saw him in a good temper she could sometimes take a holiday from her habitual patience.
She began to gather up her rings, and slip them one after the other on to her white fingers. Here was the diamond half-hoop, her engagement ring. Arthur had been generous but unoriginal. Here was the emerald that he had bought during their honeymoon. Here, the ruby set between two splendid pearls that he had bought her after that affair. She twisted it round on her finger reflectively. Her gentle face hardened. From the dressing-room she could hear her husband jingling pencils, pennies and his watch, as he transferred them from the chest to his pockets. "Does he still keep her photograph in his watch case?" she wondered. That would be like Arthur, to repent extravagantly, and then to keep one little trace of his misdeed to sigh over.
Mrs. Hammond was not a sentimentalist. She clapped the ruby ring down on top of the emerald and diamond, and smiled faintly without too much bitterness as she heard the faint whirring sound of Arthur winding up his watch. It was his inevitable prelude to descent for breakfast.
"You'll order some more Burgundy, Arthur, won't you?"
"Better have a few bottles of fizz up while we're about it, hadn't we?" Mr. Hammond was dressed and disposed to take the world and the dinner-party more seriously. Like many middle-aged men he laid aside maturity with his clothes, and looked like a schoolboy in pyjamas, feeling like one too.
"Not champagne, I think, Arthur. We don't want to be thought ostentatious. Things must be right."
Reluctantly he agreed. Though his taste in parties differed from hers, he had to admit that in these things she was right. Although he chaffed her, he paid this tribute of acknowledgment to the long years of patient sowing of the social ground in Marshington until now at last the Neales were ripe for harvest.
Half amused at the object of her ambition, pleased to allow her to please herself if that did not interfere with his comfort, proud that she was successful in the quest that she had undertaken, Arthur Hammond went downstairs to order some more of the best Burgundy.