He found Daintry lying on the sofa in the dining-room down-stairs, her head on a white bed-pillow. Kate was leaning over her. The room was in some disorder—littered with this and that, a bottle of eau de Cologne, Mr. Bonamy’s papers, books, and sewing; but it looked comfortable, for it was very evidently inhabited. A fastidious eye might have thought it was too much inhabited; and yet proofs of refinement were not wanting, though the sofa was covered with horsehair, and the mirror was heavy and ugly, and the grate, knee-high, was as old as the Georges. There were flowers on the table and on the little cottage piano; and by the side of the last was a violin-case. Not many people in Claversham knew that Mr. Bonamy played the violin. Still fewer had heard him play, for he never did so out of his own house.
Possibly a very particular suitor might have preferred to find Kate attending on her sister in a boudoir, free from a lawyer’s papers, furnished in a less solid and durable style, and with some livelier look-out than through wire blinds upon a dull street. But another might have thought that the office in which she was engaged, and the gentleness of her touch and eye as she went about it, made up for all deficiencies.
Dr. Gregg was not of a nature to appreciate either the deficiencies or the set-off; but he had eyes for the girl’s grace and beauty, for the neatness of the well-fitting blue gown and the white collar and cuffs; and he shook hands with her and devoted himself to Daintry—who disliked him extremely and was very fractious—with the most anxious solicitude. “It is only a sick headache!” he said finally, with bluntness which was meant for encouragement. “It is nothing, you know.”
“I wish you had it, then!” Daintry wailed, burying her face in the pillow.
“It will be gone in the morning!” he retorted, rising and keeping his temper by an unnatural effort. “She will be the better for it afterward, Miss Bonamy.”
To this Daintry vouchsafed no answer, unless a muttered “Rubbish!” was intended for one. He affected not to hear it, at any rate. He was all good-temper this morning; the unfortunate point about this being that his good nature was a shade more unpleasant than his usual snappish manner.
