"This I suppose is the drawing-room?" And the bride threw open the door and stood in a "monarch of all I survey" attitude on the threshold. Within, it looked black and aggressively forbidding; it was as if the spirit of the old house distrusted this stranger.
"Oh dear me, what a horrible smell of damp and dry rot! I shall have a fire in here every day."
Having made this announcement, Mrs. Puckle closed the door with emphasis, and mounted the stairs.
The landing was already piled with luggage--bags, baskets, battered cardboard boxes, and shabby trunks. Lizzie conducted her supplanter to her quarters with exaggerated ceremony--even dissembling her feelings so far as to get out fresh towels and the best scented soap--and having been told to order dinner to be ready in ten minutes' time, she flew down to me.
As the craven and base professor was a refugee in his den, Lizzie and I had the dining-room to ourselves.
"So for once he _did_ mind telling!" I began.
"Eva, how can you joke?" she interrupted indignantly; "I was wrong to let him go alone, but influenza makes one such a worm, not only weak in body but in mind, otherwise I never would have consented to this trip to London--a most fatal excursion for him. Mrs. Bickers is the worst, most catty, and pushing of all the widows. I believe she is penniless and has just flattered herself into this comfortable home." Then to Clarice who had entered gaping, "Clarice, your master was married ten days ago; let Eliza know."
"Eliza, she do know," was the prompt reply. "She says the master be daft!"
A stealthy rustle on the stairs interrupted Clarice, who hurried out, only to return almost immediately with the soup tureen and evidently prepared to enjoy a good leisurely stare at the stranger--a sleek, complacent matron, wearing a pink satin blouse and a large lace collar, fastened by a new-looking diamond brooch.
Seating herself at the head of the table and seizing the soup ladle, Mrs. Puckle said:
"I'll just sit here, Lizzie dear, I know you won't mind, and begin to take over at once--it saves trouble."
Lizzie's answer was a bow as she placed herself opposite to me; the professor now appeared and, with assumed geniality, announced that he was "starving."