The White Peacock Part 23

"I do!" said my mother.

"I suppose it means we may not ask him questions," Lettie concluded, always very busily sewing.

He laughed. She had broken her cotton, and was trying to thread the needle again.

"What have you been doing this miserable weather?" he enquired awkwardly.

"Oh, we have sat at home desolate. 'Ever of thee I'm fo-o-ondly dreeaming'-and so on. Haven't we mother?"

"Well," said mother, "I don't know. We imagined him all sorts of lions up there."

"What a shame we may not ask him to roar his old roars over for us,"

said Lettie.

"What are they like?" he asked.

"How should I know? Like a sucking dove, to judge from your present voice. 'A monstrous little voice.'"

He laughed uncomfortably.

She went on sewing, suddenly beginning to sing to herself:

"p.u.s.s.y cat, p.u.s.s.y cat, where have you been?

I've been up to London to see the fine queen: p.u.s.s.y cat, p.u.s.s.y cat, what did you there-- I frightened a little mouse under a stair."

"I suppose," she added, "that may be so. Poor mouse!-but I guess she's none the worse. You did not see the queen, though?"

"She was not in London," he replied sarcastically.

"You don't--" she said, taking two pins from between her teeth. "I suppose you don't mean by that, she was in Eberwich-your queen?"

"I don't know where she was," he answered angrily.

"Oh!" she said, very sweetly, "I thought perhaps you had met her in Eberwich. When did you come back?"

"Last night," he replied.

"Oh-why didn't you come and see us before?"

"I've been at the offices all day."

"I've been up to Eberwich," she said innocently.

"Have you?"

"Yes. And I feel so cross because of it. I thought I might see you. I felt as if you were at home."

She st.i.tched a little, and glanced up secretly to watch his face redden, then she continued innocently,

"Yes-I felt you had come back. It is funny how one has a feeling occasionally that someone is near; when it is someone one has a sympathy with." She continued to st.i.tch, then she took a pin from her bosom, and fixed her work, all without the least suspicion of guile.

"I thought I might meet you when I was out--" another pause, another fixing, a pin to be taken from her lips-"but I didn't."

"I was at the office till rather late," he said quickly.

She st.i.tched away calmly, provokingly.

She took the pin from her mouth again, fixed down a fold of stuff, and said softly:

"You little liar."

Mother had gone out of the room for her recipe book.

He sat on his chair dumb with mortification. She st.i.tched swiftly and unerringly. There was silence for some moments. Then he spoke:

"I did not know you wanted me for the pleasure of plucking this crow,"

he said.

"I wanted you!" she exclaimed, looking up for the first time, "Who said I wanted you?"

"No one. If you didn't want me I may as well go."

The sound of st.i.tching alone broke the silence for some moments, then she said deliberately:

"What made you think I wanted you?"

"I don't care a d.a.m.n whether you wanted me or whether you didn't."

"It seems to upset you! And don't use bad language. It is the privilege of those near and dear to one."

"That's why you begin it, I suppose."

"I cannot remember--" she said loftily.

He laughed sarcastically.

"Well-if you're so beastly cut up about it--"

He put this tentatively, expecting the soft answer. But she refused to speak, and went on st.i.tching. He fidgeted about, twisted his cap uncomfortably, and sighed. At last he said:

"Well-you-have we done then?"

She had the vast superiority, in that she was engaged in ostentatious work. She could fix the cloth, regard it quizzically, rearrange it, settle down and begin to sew before she replied. This humbled him. At last she said:

"I thought so this afternoon."

"But, good G.o.d, Lettie, can't you drop it?"