She didn’t think she had ever got such a start in her life as when she heard the footsteps. Her hand went to her overall pocket and her mouth dropped open on a suppressed scream. And after all it was only Mrs. Bolder come to see why in the world she hadn’t come down to her tea. Not that she would have wanted to put Mrs. Bolder about like that, because she wouldn’t, but who’d have thought of her coming through into the front? Once a day to see Miss Crewe about the orders, but that was the beginning and the end of it. To say that Mrs. Bolder was put about was to draw it very mild indeed. She was a little woman with a high colour and a lot of grey hair, and everyone in Hazel Green knew about her temper. She stood in the doorway and looked at Miss Holiday as if she could do her a mischief.
“And what are you doing here?” she said. “Oh, you come in to see to the fire, did you? And Miss Crewe only gone out a half an hour! Coal burns quick enough, we all know that, but it don’t burn as quick as that would come to. And you’ve no business in this room, as well you know, or you wouldn’t have jumped like you did when I come in. And I’ll thank you, Miss Holiday, to mind your own business and to let me get on with mine which was making the tea, and the kettle boiling over this quarter of an hour, and me wondering whether you’d been took with a stroke or fallen down somewhere in a fit.”
Miss Holiday was moved to feeble protest.
“Fits nor strokes is not what we’ve ever had, not in our family,” she said.
Her hands had gone into her overall pockets, but she could feel them trembling there. She went past Mrs. Bolder, standing to see her out of the room, and heard the clap of the door as she followed her. She had been looking forward to her tea, because there was always a nice cake Sundays, but she wasn’t going to be able to enjoy it, not if she had to eat it with temper sauce. She went meekly down the passage, and across the hall, and through the baize door with Mrs. Bolder’s tongue driving her.
CHAPTER 12
It was about half an hour later that Miss Lucy Cunningham joined the tea-party in Jenny’s room, coming in by the side door without troubling anyone to answer it, as she had done for the last thirty years. Since she never left the house without preparing for rain, she wore a man’s waterproof over her winter coat and carried a stout umbrella.
“Well, here I am,” she said, “and better late than never, but I do like to give Henry his tea. And then I thought I would just drop in and have a word with Mrs. Stubbs about the broody hen she has promised me. My crossed birds won’t sit. But I won’t have that light Sussex she lent me last year-a most contrary bird, and I lost half the chicks. I thought I’d just make sure I didn’t get her again, so I went down to the Holly Tree and came along by the road. How do you do, Mr. Lester? You are at the Holly Tree, are you not? I think my brother met you there. I hope Mrs. Stubbs makes you comfortable-but I needn’t ask, she always does.” She dropped the hand which she had been shaking and addressed the room in general. “Now don’t let me go away without my umbrella. Perhaps I had better keep it by me. But you can take my waterproof, Nicholas. And yes, perhaps the coat too. It’s really quite dreadfully hot in here. Much better for Jenny to have the windows open. There isn’t any tonic like fresh air. How are you, Rosamond? You look peaky. You should take yoghourt three times a day-there’s nothing like it. And no trouble at all-you just set the milk and let it turn sour… Yes, you can take this scarf-I shan’t want it in here.”
Divested of successive layers of clothing, she appeared a good deal less bulky, though still more than comfortably plump. Yoghourt or no yoghourt, she made an excellent tea, and continued to talk in a rapid discursive manner whilst partaking of buttered scone, fruit cake, and Mrs. Bolder’s own particular tea-biscuits, which were the subject of a keen rivalry with Florrie Hunt. Lucy Cunningham had been trying to get the recipe for thirty years, and if she tried for another thirty she would still be wasting her time. Mrs. Bolder was one that kept herself to herself, and the recipe for her biscuits would go to no one but her own flesh and blood, and not to them whilst there was breath in her body. For the moment Miss Cunningham left well alone. She continued to press the claims of sour milk upon Rosamond and Jenny, together with black treacle and a horrible mixture of milk and brewer’s yeast.
Nicholas burst out laughing.
“I should have thought dieting would begin at home. You don’t take any of these things yourself, and thank heaven you know better than to inflict them on your family.”
Miss Lucy’s round blue eyes had quite a hurt expression.
“But, my dear, I don’t need them. I daresay I might become slimmer, but if you feel well you feel well, and what do a few pounds matter when all is said and done?”
Jenny giggled.
“But Rosamond and I don’t want to lose any pounds. We’re always being told we ought to put them on.”
“Oh, but you would, my dear, I’m sure. You wouldn’t be slimming, and you could have cream and butter and eggs, and even suet pudding if you wanted to.”
“I shouldn’t want to if I had black treacle and that sour milk stuff,” said Jenny. “I shouldn’t want anything for hours and hours and hours. I expect that’s why you get slim.”
Rosamond moved across until she was between Jenny and Lucy Cunningham. That was the worst of parties, Jenny got all worked up and began to show off. She did not know that the look she sent to Craig Lester was one of appeal, but as she began to talk to Lucy about hens she could hear him asking Nicholas whether he had seen a play which had set everyone laughing in town. He embarked on an amusing description of it for what was obviously Jenny’s benefit, and soon had her laughing too.
The hens petered out after a little. Miss Cunningham looked at her watch.
“I would have liked to see Lydia. I suppose she won’t be late?”
“Oh, no.”
“It is not as if she has any distance to go. Henry saw her turn in at the White Cottage.”
“So did I,” said Craig Lester, and then felt that perhaps he had better have held his tongue.
Miss Lucy said, “Oh, dear!” in a tone which made it plain that she knew all about the meeting with Henry Cunningham. She made a little vexed sound, and began to praise Mrs. Bolder’s biscuits and to sound Rosamond as to the likelihood of her being persuaded to part with the recipe.
“I wouldn’t dare ask her-I really wouldn’t.”
“Faint heart never won fair biscuit!” said Nicholas, laughing. “You all tremble before her, and she knows it. Rosamond is the worst of the lot.”
Rosamond laughed too, but on a rueful note.
“Well, she’s got a very daunting piece about being only a poor widow so of course anyone can trample on her, and once she has got started on it you simply can’t stop her and every relation she has ever lost comes into it. It goes on for about half an hour and by the time it’s over you feel as if it was all your fault.”
Nicholas threw her a kiss.