“How dare you call this dear child names?” she cried, replying to the limitless opprobrium which lay behind the word ‘infant’ rather than to the term itself.
“Come, come,” said Andy, rising. “He is an infant all right, aren’t you, Jimmy? Not twenty-one yet, ha-ha! There is nothing unpleasant in the word ‘infant.’ ”
He smiled ingratiatingly from one angry face to the other, trying to carry it off easily, but in truth as frightened as a decent young man always is when he stands between two quarrelling women.
“There’s a way,” replied Mrs. Simpson slowly, glaring with her prominent light-blue eyes at Mrs. Jebb – “there’s a way of saying ‘woman’ that implies things I wouldn’t sully my lips by uttering. And yet ‘woman’ isn’t a bad word.”
“It all comes to this,” panted Mrs. Jebb. “Is Mrs. Simpson to walk in without a with-your-leave or a by-your-leave and start polishing your sideboard, or is she not?”
“It’s her sideboard,” said Andy weakly. “But I’m sure you’ll look after it all right, if Mrs. Simpson doesn’t mind.”
“Why should she mind? And if it’s hers, why doesn’t she take it away? Dozens of times I’ve said that the hideous thing completely ruins your dining-room, and I’m sure – ”
“Now,” interposed Mrs. Simpson, who grew, quiet as her opponent grew noisy, “now I shall say what I’d meant to keep to myself, because Mrs. Jebb has her living to earn, poor thing, and I wouldn’t do her an injury. That sideboard in its present state, Mr. Deane, is a disgrace. So is your beautiful table. So is all the furniture.”
“It only wants dusting. We’ve not had time this morning,” quavered Mrs. Jebb, retreating before this onslaught.
“It wants what you’ll never give it,” said Mrs. Simpson, hauling Jimmy away, and looking back for a last shot. “It wants elbow-grease.”
“Look here,” said Andy, pulling himself together. “I – er – really – discord in a clergyman’s house is what I greatly dislike. Mrs. Jebb, I told Mrs. Simpson she could come and clean her sideboard. Mrs. Simpson, you must put yourself in Mrs. Jebb’s place and consider if your feelings might not have been hurt under similar circumstances. This really won’t do.”
He threw his head back, settled his chin in his collar, and looked as nearly like the senior curate before a refractory Bible Class as nature permitted.
Mrs. Simpson paused.
“I came peacefully enough,” she said, “and I was going to tell Mrs. Jebb, only she went off at such a tangent, that I did ring five times. But I couldn’t make any one hear, so I walked into the hall. Then I saw the dining-room door open, and nobody there, so I went in there and started polishing. I’ll own it may have looked funny, but she shouldn’t have spoken as she did.”
“There! That makes all the difference. Doesn’t it, Mrs. Jebb?” said Andy eagerly, forgetting to be dignified. “I say, shake hands and make it up. Jimmy, shake hands with Mrs. Jebb to start with.”
“Won’t. Hate her. She’s got yeller teef like old Towzer.”
“Hush, hush,” said Mrs. Simpson, changing all in a minute from the fighting woman to the careful mother. “Jimmy mustn’t talk like that. Jimmy must beg the lady’s pardon.”
“Won’t,” said that gentleman truculently.
“Jimmy must do as he’s told,” said Mrs. Simpson, then, grasping the pudgy little hand firmly, she held it out to the housekeeper.
“I’m sure I’ve no wish – ” began Mrs. Jebb, with trembling stateliness, when Andy cast aside the mantle of the senior curate, grabbed Mrs. Jebb’s hand in his own, and pushed the bony fingers of his lady-cook-housekeeper towards Jimmy.
“I say,” he exclaimed boyishly, “you can’t refuse to shake hands with a little chap like that!”
Mrs. Jebb felt the touch of the firm, young fingers on her wrist, weakened, advanced a step, finally ‘eye-cornered’ Andy with a tremulous smile and waggled once the fat hand of Master Simpson.
“I’m sure,” she said, “I’ve no wish to be un-neighbourly, Mrs. Simpson. It was just seeing you there on your knees rubbing the sideboard front when I never expected to see anything but the cat or Mr. Deane. I ought to be able to enter into a widow’s feelings if anybody ever could. With Mr. Jebb I was not merely a wife, I was an obsession.”
“With all my wordly goods I thee endow, of course,” quoted Mrs. Simpson vaguely, in whose mind the words possession and obsession had somehow run together and produced a blurred impression of Mrs. Jebb’s meaning. But she saw Andy was anxious for peace, and gratitude for the sideboard gradually overcoming her anger, she wished to do her part.
“Two widows living near together should be on good terms,” said Mrs. Jebb, her annoyance also cooling, while prudence dictated a course obviously pleasing to Andy. “Will you step into my room and have a cup of tea? I am no breakfast-eater, and generally take one at eleven. And” – she concluded the amend generously, “Jimmy shall have a biscuit with pink sugar on the top.”
That settled it; for Jimmy was so fond of eating that he would have accompanied the sweep – his idea of the embodiment of evil – to search for biscuits with pink sugar on them.
So the baize door of the study banged in the rear of an amicable trio while Andy sat down and mopped his brow. It was difficult to catch evolution by the tail after that – he seemed to have gone so far from it. But he knitted his brow, shook his fountain-pen, and started on the quest.
One thought, however, would creep in and out of the books of reference and between the written words – it was not so easy as it looked, to live in a place where everybody was so inextricably mixed up with everybody else. And later in the day he was to have another striking proof of this queer inter-independence of which a townsman knows so little. For when he walked past the Petches’ cottage he beheld the Attertons’ landau, drawn by a sleek and fat pair of horses and driven by a sleek and fat coachman, standing in front of the little gate. Elizabeth Atterton and an ample lady in grey occupied the carriage, and they were inspecting a parrot in a cage, which Mrs. Petch rested on the step.
“I trust,” said Mrs. Atterton, “that William is in good health. He looks” – she paused – “he looks far from well, Emma.”
“Moulting, ’m,” said Mrs. Petch. “That’s all.”
“But this is not the season for moulting,” objected Elizabeth.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Petch, with an easy smile, “but William always was different to other birds. Scores and hundreds of times I’ve heard my poor mistress say so.”
“Well, it was a remark my poor aunt often made,” said Mrs. Atterton, eyeing the dejected attitude and naked chest of the parrot doubtfully.
“I’m sure you give him every attention. You would, of course, when your annuity dies with him. My poor aunt no doubt felt that.” She paused again, and added in answer to Mrs. Petch’s look of wounded innocence, “Of course, you would in any case. I do not forget what a devoted maid you were to poor Aunt Arabella.”
“She trusted me with William,” said Mrs. Petch simply, applying the corner of her apron to her eye.
“I know. I was not reflecting on you in any way, of course, Emma,” said Mrs. Atterton kindly. “Only, I promised to see after William sometimes, and I like to do it. Poor William! Of course, one can’t expect him to live for ever.”
“Parrots sometimes live to be a hundred,” said Mrs. Petch quickly. “Sam read that in the paper only the other day, ’m.”
“Well, we’ll hope William may,” said Mrs. Atterton comfortably. “I never liked him, even in his best days, but I don’t want him to die.”
There