When Albert brought his head once more into the room he suddenly discovered the stuffiness of the atmosphere, and with the large, free gestures of a mountaineer and a sanitarian threw open both windows as wide as possible. The bleak wind from the moorlands surged in, fluttering curtains, and lowering the temperature at a run.
"Won’t Rupert catch cold?" Hilda suggested, chilled.
"He’s got to be hardened, Rupert has!" Albert replied easily. "Fresh air! Nothing like it! Does ’em good to feel it!"
"Pity you didn’t think so a bit earlier!"
Her countenance was too expressive. Albert divined some ironic thought in her brain, and turned on her with a sort of parrying jeer:
In this phrase, which both he and Clara employed with increasing frequency, Albert let out not only his jealousy of, but his respect for, the head of the family. Hilda did not like it, but it flattered her on Edwin’s behalf, and she never showed her resentment of the attitude which prompted it.
"Edwin? Oh, he’s all right. He’s working." She put a slight emphasis on the last pronoun, in order revengefully to contrast Edwin’s industry with Albert’s presence during business hours at a children’s birthday party. "He said to me as he went out that he must go and earn something towards Maggie’s rent." She laughed softly.
Clara smiled cautiously; Maggie smiled and blushed a little; Albert did not commit himself; only Auntie Hamps laughed without reserve.
Although Hilda had audaciously gone forth that afternoon with the express intention of opening negotiations, on her own initiative, with Maggie for the purchase of the house, she had certainly not meant to discuss the matter in the presence of the entire family. But she was seized by one of her characteristic impulses, and she gave herself up to it with the usual mixture of glee and apprehension. She said:
"I suppose you wouldn’t care to sell us the house, would you, Maggie?"
Everybody became alert, and as it grew apparent that the company was assisting at the actual birth of a family episode or incident, a peculiar feeling of eager pleasure spread through the room, and the appetite for history-making leapt up.
"Indeed I should!" Maggie answered, with a deepening flush, and all were astonished at her decisiveness, and at the warmth of her tone. "I never wanted the house. Only it was arranged that I should have it, so of course I took it." The long-silent victim was speaking. Money was useless to her, for she was incapable of turning it into happiness; but she had her views on finance and property, nevertheless; and though in all such matters she did as she was told, submissively accepting the decisions of brother or brother-in-law as decrees of fate, yet she was quite aware of the victimhood. The assemblage was surprised and even a little intimidated by her mild outburst.