“I wonder she was not,” said Anna; “the cab seems to have brought so little.”
“It was our own cab, Miss Anna,” said Ethel.
“Well, we have come to the end,” said Benjamin.
“Thank you, sir,” said Ethel, in an impersonal tone, and left the room.
“We had better send a message to Cook, that both she and the bag are in the house,” said Bernard. “It may be a relief to her mind. Or perhaps Ethel will think to tell her.”
“Why is it all so funny?” said Anna.
Claribel shook her head and lifted her eyebrows in hopeless fellow-feeling.
“Did Ethel mean that they paid for the cab themselves?” said Reuben.
“Well, it was an unnecessary expense,” said his sister, “as they brought nothing in it.”
“They brought themselves,” said Bernard, “even if it was a happy accident. And that was our responsibility.”
“And now it is that to keep them here,” said Jenney, with some dryness. “I had better give them the money.”
“It will come out of the housekeeping,” said Anna. “I should have been consulted.”
“If you had thought to meet them at the station, you would have been,” said Esmond.
“They could not walk three miles after their journey,” said Jenney.
“Why not?” said Anna. “They had not been using their legs. I should have thought an hour in the air would do them good.”
“Did you adopt that restorative when you arrived?” said Esmond.
Claribel heaved a faint sigh at the persistence of the subject.
“I cannot think why you don’t see the difference,” said Anna. “We are not all alike.”
“Ethel made an offer of walking one way,” said Bernard. “And a vain sacrifice is known to be the most tragic.”
“Oh, Ethel is too hefty to have any chance of appearing anything else.”
“Cook appears to be more fortunate,” said Esmond.
Ethel entered the room with the letters.
“How much was your cab?” said Anna.
Ethel looked at her for a moment.
“Four shillings, Miss Anna, the cab itself.”
“How do you mean? The cab itself?”
“There was the shilling we gave to the man, Miss Anna.”
“There was no need for that. Four shillings was an ample charge.”
“It is the accepted thing, Miss Anna. We should only have incurred a glance.”
“Well, I am afraid I cannot help that. If you make people presents, it is your own affair. I will give you the four shillings.”
“Cook and I would prefer to pay it out of our own pocket Miss Anna.”
“What an odd preference! I should not feel it.”
Ethel met this statement with silence, which is known sometimes to suggest a further attitude.
“Why do you want to pay it yourselves?”
“It is better to do everything or nothing, Miss Anna. And it is a trifling sum.”
“Oh, well, if those are your notions! We cannot do more than have what we would choose.”
Ethel left the room, and Anna looked at her family.
“Well, that is a little piece of luck.”
“You will have to give them the money,” said Esmond.
“Oh, Ethel would be offended to death, if I brought up the subject again.”
“Jenney can give it to them,” said Reuben. “I expect they would really like to have it.”
“Well, it must not come from the mistress of the house. And I think it would be better to leave the matter. It would be wiser, wouldn’t it, Father?”
Anna was the only one of Benjamin’s children who ever addressed him of her own will, and the only one unable to feel that he valued the habit. Benjamin was a natural victim of the ironies of fate.
“I think as Ethel has made her decision, we need not question it,” he said, something in his face and voice showing him and his daughter as father and child.
“If we did not accept things at this stage, there would never be and end to them,” said Anna.
“And we still hope that will not be the case with this one,” said Esmond.
“I see why they left their luggage,” said Bernard. “The cab was their own, and they would put it to what use they chose.”
“I don’t for a minute think they meant it to be theirs,” said Anna.
“Is it all coming up again?” said Claribel. “I would so much rather talk about something more interesting than cabs and bags.”
“That was not their reason,” said Jenney. “They were bewildered by everything, and they had no room for it all.”
“We had to take an extra cab because of it,” said Esmond; “so the question of cabs seems really to be cancelled out.”
“I will tell them that at some time,” said Anna.
“There is no need,” said Benjamin, almost with a smile.
“I should rather enjoy it, Father. Ethel’s consistent smugness becomes too much.”
“So it is fair that she should have a dose of yours,” said Esmond.
“Well, why not have things fair? I see no objection to it. We cannot be always treating them with such magnanimity. It only results in a tiresome degree of self-satisfaction.”
“We are most of us fairly content with ourselves,” said Reuben.
“I don’t know that I am,” said his sister, with a sudden touch of rueful honesty. “Doubts rise up sometimes. Dear, dear, what clever talk it all is!”
“It sounds so,” said Jenney, on a puzzled note. “And yet it is all about nothing, isn’t it?”
“Show us how to talk about something, Miss Jennings,” said Benjamin.
“Jenney must have enough practice with those two servants,” said Anna. “I have no taste for their personal gossip myself.”
“I have a passion for it,” said Bernard. “And I have an admiration for people who engage in it. It shows a creative mind.”
“They make most of it up, if that is what you mean,” said his sister.
“I share the gossip, when you are all out, and I have my tea with them,” said Reuben.
“Is that your idea or theirs?” said his sister.
“Mine. My mind is also creative. It produced the idea,” said Reuben, in an almost shouting tone.
“I suspect that they like to save the trouble of bringing up your tray.”
“They have the woman’s tenderness for what is weak, especially when it is masculine.”
“What a way to talk!” said Jenney.
“Well, one cannot be always turning one’s eyes from the truth.”
“You might do so sometimes,” said Esmond, “even when it is truth as exemplified in yourself.”
“Are we to go in a body to visit our relations?” said Anna.
“I will go by myself this evening,” said Benjamin, taking the question to himself. “And the rest of you should go to-morrow.”
“I hope they will disguise any shrinking they have from what is abnormal,” said Reuben.
“Your concern with yourself approaches that,” said Esmond, “and they may not have any liking for it.”
“Would you have chosen to be quite like other people?” said Anna to Reuben, in an innocently rallying tone.
“Anything to attract attention!” said the latter.
“Well, I will pay my visit,” said Benjamin. “It will not be a long one the first time.”
“I always feel rather uncomfortable with that family,” said Anna, when her father had gone. “But don’t tell Father that I said so.”
“We will try to break our habit of running to him with everything,” said Bernard.
Reuben burst into laughter.
“That sort of thing is not hidden,” said Esmond.
“You make me feel that I have awkward manners,” said his sister.
“Being ill at ease is known to have that result,” said Esmond, leaning back in personal freedom from the handicap.
“I never think of people’s opinions, when I am with them,” said Claribel. “Perhaps I feel it is their part to be thinking of mine.”