The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [65]
“And little shance ye’d have to get her!” retorted Norry; “‘tis little she regards the likes o’ you towards thim that hasn’t a Christhian to look to but herself.” Norry defiantly shook the foam from the birch rod, and proceeded with her eulogy of Julia Duffy. “She’s as wise a woman and as good a scholar as what’s in the country, and many’s the poor craythure that’s prayin’ hard for her night and morning for all she done for thim. B’leeve you me, there’s plinty would come to her funeral that’d be follyin’ their own only for her and her doctherin’.”
“She has a very pretty place,” remarked Francie who wished to be agreeable, but could not conscientiously extol Miss Duffy; “it’s a pity she isn’t able to keep the house nicer.”
“Nice! What way have she to keep it nice that hasn’t one but herself to look to! And if it was clane itself, it’s all the good it’d do her that they’d throw her out of it quicker.”
“Who’d throw her out?”
“I know that meself.” Norry turned away and banged open the door of the oven. “There’s plinty that’s ready to pull the bed from undher a lone woman if they’re lookin’ for it for theirselves.”
The mixture had by this time been poured into its tin shape, and, having placed it in the oven, Francie seated herself on the kitchen table to superintend its baking. The voice of conscience told her to go back to the dining-room and finish her letter, but she repressed it, and, picking up a kitten that had lurked, unsuspected, between a frying-pan and the wall during the rout of its relatives, she proceeded to while away the time by tormenting it, and insulting the cockatoo with frivolous questions.
Miss Mullen’s weekly haggle with the butcher did not last quite as long as usual this Friday morning. She had, in fact, concluded it by herself taking the butcher’s knife, and with jocose determination, had proceeded to cut off the special portion of the “rack” which she wished for, in spite of Mr. Driscoll’s protestations that it had been bespoke by Mrs. Gascogne. Exhilarated by this success, she walked home at a brisk pace, regardless of the heat, and of the weight of the rusty black tourists, bag which she always wore, slung across her shoulders by a strap, on her expeditions into the town. There was no one to be seen in the house when she came into it, except the exiled cats, who were sleeping moodily in a patch of sunshine on the hall-mat, and after some passing endearments, their mistress went on into the dining-room, in which, by preference, as well as for economy, she sat in the mornings. It had, at all events, one advantage over the drawing-room, in possessing a sunny French window, opening on to the little grass-garden—a few untidy flower-beds, with a high, unclipped hedge surrounding them, the resort of cats and their breakfast dishes, but for all that a pleasant outlook on a hot day. Francie had been writing at the dinner-table, and Charlotte sat down in the chair that her cousin had vacated, and began to add up the expenses of the morning. When she had finished, she opened the blotter to dry her figures, and saw, lying in it, the letter that Francie had begun.
In the matter of reading a letter not intended for her eye, Miss Mullen recognised only her own inclinations, and the facilities afforded to her by fate, and in this instance one played into the hands of the other. She read the letter through quickly, her mouth set at its grimmest expression of attention, and replaced it carefully in the blotting-case where she found it. She sat still, her two fists clenched on the table before her, and her face rather redder than even the hot walk from Lismoyle had made it.
There had been a good deal of information in the letter that was new to her, and it seemed important enough to demand much consideration. The reflection on her own contribution to the bazaar did not hurt her in the least, in fact, it slightly raised her opinion of Francie that she should have noticed it; but that ingenuous confidence about the evening spent in the gallery was another affair. At