The day began quietly. The present-giving in this household did not take place until after the morning service and the midday meal, and Robert Corder, who certainly had some force in his personality, created an atmosphere of peaceful thankfulness at the breakfast table. The great day had dawned and he seemed to go on tiptoe, as though he felt the presence of the sleeping, sacred babe, and though he smiled readily, he did not do it broadly, and his good wishes were given like blessings, but, at one o’clock, when Hannah was basting the turkey, one of Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s annual gifts, thankful, in spite of her red cheeks, for a duty which freed her from the chapel, she heard the loud tones of his voice like a fanfare authorising joviality to begin.
At this signal, Hannah and Doris loaded the tray with turkey, greens, potatoes, gravy and sauce, and Uncle Jim appeared quietly from nowhere and picked up the burden. The sight of his brother-in-law’s helpfulness was not altogether pleasing to Robert Corder; it might have been interpreted as a reproach, but he made a little joke about the handy man and Uncle Jim muttered that the tray was too heavy for a woman.
“But it’s all knack, all knack,” Robert Corder assured him. “Trained nurses—and what wonderful women they are—can lift a heavy man without an effort.”
“But you’re not a trained nurse, are you?” asked Uncle Jim.
Hannah wanted to say that, no, unfortunately, she was not a wonderful woman, but she remembered that it was Christmas Day and simply shook her head. She tried to look weak and modest, the subject of contention between two strong men, and then, unable to resist asserting herself, she ruined this unique experience by remarking that she was used to handling turkeys, dead and alive.
“Alive?” Robert Corder said gently, giving her a chance to retract before she must be proved guilty of untruthfulness.
“And alive. I was born and bred on a farm.”
“Were you? Then you’ll be able to give me some advice. I’m thinking of starting a little farm myself.”
“Come, come, let us take our places,” said Robert Corder. “And I’ll ask you to carve, Miss Mole, as you have such an intimate knowledge of turkeys,” he said, and Hannah, looking at him over the knife she sharpened, thought he had a positive genius for getting a note of disparagement into his voice. “But where’s Ethel? We can’t start our Christmas dinner without Ethel.”
“She’ll be here in a minute,” Howard said quickly.
“But where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how can you say she’ll be here in a minute?”
“Because she’ll want her dinner.”
“Your remark was misleading. You made a statement which was nothing but a conjecture. If that sort of quibbling is what you learn at Oxford—”
“Oh, I’ve learnt a lot more than that,” Howard began, and two people held their breath for the few seconds that passed before Uncle Jim said good-humouredly:
“Well, well, let’s load the tray up again and put the turkey in the oven. The skies won’t fall because Ethel’s a few minutes late.”
“I happen to be thinking of all the trouble Miss Mole has taken.”
“Don’t mention it,” Hannah said, and wished she could look at Wilfrid. Mr. Corder’s moments of consideration always arrived when he was annoyed with someone else.
“I suppose she was at chapel?” he went on.
“Oh yes, she was at chapel!” Ruth and Howard cried together, in an eager unanimity.
“Not in our pew.”
“No,” it was Ruth who started first and Howard did not try to catch her up. “If Ethel sees one of her girls, she always goes and sits with her. I suppose the girl likes it,” she added thoughtfully, and Robert Corder gave a sharp glance at her innocently pensive face.
“Most inconsiderate,” he said, “and Ethel must have her dinner cold. Let us begin. Ask a blessing, Ruth.”
Ruth obeyed in an unwilling mumble. She disliked addressing her God in the family circle as much as hearing her father do it from the pulpit, but this was not the moment to make more trouble and, as though even so slight a communication with the unseen, and done by proxy, had cleared away his irritability, Robert Corder forebore to reproach Ethel when, flushed and breathless, she slipped into her place, just as Hannah, with the carving knife poised in her hand, chose the spot for its insertion with great precision.
“And how did you think they sang the carols, Ethel?” her father asked.
“Very well,” Howard and Ruth said heartily in another duet.
“I was asking Ethel.”
Ethel was physically and mentally incapable of telling a lie: she could not prevaricate without blushing, yet now, in an inspiration of self-protection and in reference, as Hannah guessed, to some singing not heard by Robert Corder, she made the one remark likely to turn aside his questions. “Not very well,” she said, with a roll of her eyes.
“I agree with you,” he said curtly, and he looked at Howard. “I can only suppose you were not listening. But I would rather hear a disagreeable truth than a pleasant fiction. It was very bad. Half the choir was away.”
“Cooking their Christmas dinners, like Miss Mole has been doing for us,” said
