“Well, you are getting a big boy!” said Nurse Wilks, beaming.
“Do you think so?” said Frederick, with equal amiability.
“Quite the little man! And all dressed up. Go into the parlour, dear, and sit down. I’m getting the tea.”
“Thanks.”
“Wipe your boots!”
The voice, thundering from a quarter whence hitherto only soft cooings had proceeded, affected Frederick Mulliner a little like the touching off of a mine beneath his feet. Spinning round he perceived a different person altogether from the mild and kindly hostess of a moment back. It was plain that there yet lingered in Nurse Wilks not a little of the ancient fire. Her mouth was tightly compressed and her eyes gleamed dangerously.
“Theideaofyourbringingyournastydirtybootsintomynicecleanhousewithoutwipingthem!” said Nurse Wilks.
“Sorry!” said Frederick humbly.
He burnished the criticized shoes on the mat, and tottered to the parlour. He felt much smaller, much younger, and much feebler than he had felt a minute ago. His morale had been shattered into fragments.
And it was not pieced together by the sight, as he entered the parlour, of Miss Jane Oliphant sitting in an armchair by the window.
It is hardly to be supposed that the reader will be interested in the appearance of a girl of the stamp of Jane Oliphant—a girl capable of wantonly returning a good man’s letters and going off and getting engaged to a Dillingwater: but one may as well describe her and get it over. She had golden-brown hair; golden-brown eyes; golden-brown eyebrows; a nice nose with one freckle on the tip; a mouth which, when it parted in a smile, disclosed pretty teeth; and a resolute little chin.
At the present moment, the mouth was not parted in a smile. It was closed up tight, and the chin was more than resolute. It looked like the ram of a very small battleship. She gazed at Frederick as if he were the smell of onions, and she did not say a word.
Nor did Frederick say very much. Nothing is more difficult for a young man than to find exactly the right remark with which to open conversation with a girl who has recently returned his letters. (Darned good letters, too. Reading them over after opening the package, he had been amazed at their charm and eloquence.)
Frederick, then, confined his observations to the single word “Guk!” Having uttered this, he sank into a chair and stared at the carpet. The girl stared out of the window: and complete silence reigned in the room till from the interior of a clock which was ticking on the mantelpiece a small wooden bird suddenly emerged, said “Cuckoo,” and withdrew.
The abruptness of this bird’s appearance and the oddly staccato nature of its diction could not but have their effect on a man whose nerves were not what they had been. Frederick Mulliner, rising some eighteen inches from his chair, uttered a hasty exclamation.
“I beg your pardon?” said Jane Oliphant, raising her eyebrows.
“Well, how was I to know it was going to do that?” said Frederick defensively.
Jane Oliphant shrugged her shoulders. The gesture seemed to imply supreme indifference to what the sweepings of the Underworld knew or did not know.
But Frederick, the ice being now in a manner broken, refused to return to the silence.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“I have come to have tea with Nanna.”
“I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
“Oh?”
“If I’d known that you were going to be here. …”
“You’ve got a large smut on your nose.”
Frederick gritted his teeth and reached for his handkerchief.
“Perhaps I’d better go,” he said.
“You will do nothing of the kind,” said Miss Oliphant sharply. “She is looking forward to seeing you. Though why. …”
“Why?” prompted Frederick coldly.
“Oh, nothing.”
In the unpleasant silence which followed, broken only by the deep breathing of a man who was trying to choose the rudest out of the three retorts which had presented themselves to him, Nurse Wilks entered.
“It’s just a suggestion,” said Miss Oliphant aloofly, “but don’t you think you might help Nanna with that heavy tray?”
Frederick, roused from his preoccupation, sprang to his feet, blushing the blush of shame.
“You might have strained yourself, Nanna,” the girl went on, in a voice dripping with indignant sympathy.
“I was going to help her,” mumbled Frederick.
“Yes, after she had put the tray down on the table. Poor Nanna! How very heavy it must have been.”
Not for the first time since their acquaintance had begun, Frederick felt a sort of wistful wonder at his erstwhile fiancée’s uncanny ability to put him in the wrong. His emotions now were rather what they would have been if he had been detected striking his hostess with some blunt instrument.
“He always was a thoughtless boy,” said Nurse Wilks tolerantly. “Do sit down, Master Frederick, and have your tea. I’ve boiled some eggs for you. I know what a boy you always are for eggs.”
Frederick, starting, directed a swift glance at the tray. Yes, his worst fears had been realized. Eggs—and large ones. A stomach which he had fallen rather into the habit of pampering of late years gave a little whimper of apprehension.
“Yes,” proceeded Nurse Wilks, pursuing the subject, “you never could have enough eggs. Nor cake. Dear me, how sick you made yourself with cake that day at Miss Jane’s birthday party.”
“Please!” said Miss Oliphant, with a slight shiver.
She looked coldly at her fermenting fellow-guest, as he sat plumbing the deepest abysses of self-loathing.
“No eggs for me, thank you,” he said.
“Master Frederick, you will eat your nice boiled eggs,” said Nurse Wilks. Her voice was still amiable, but there was a hint of dynamite behind it.
“I don’t want any eggs.”
“Master Frederick!” The dynamite exploded. Once again that amazing transformation had taken place, and a frail little old woman had become an intimidating force with which only a Napoleon could have reckoned. “I will not have this sulking.”
Frederick gulped.
“I’m sorry,” he said, meekly. “I should enjoy an egg.”
“Two eggs,” corrected Nurse Wilks.
“Two eggs,” said
