conduct of her life very seldom allowed any external circumstance to annoy her, and when she found on her arrival home this morning a note beside the crocodile in the hall saying that her mother proposed to come to lunch, it did not interfere with the few minutes’ nap that she always allowed herself on Sunday morning after the pomp and fatigue of public worship. But it was a fact that her husband did not much care for his mother-in-law’s presence at his table, for as Mrs. Keeling said, they were apt to worry each other, and consequently Mrs. Goodford’s visits usually took place on week-days when Mr. Keeling was at the Stores. But it did not ever so faintly enter her head to send round to say that she would not be at home for lunch, because, in the first place, she did not care sufficiently whether Mamma came or not, and in the second place, because there was not the slightest chance of Mamma’s believing her. The most she could do was to intercept any worrying by excessive geniality, and as they all sat down she remarked, pausing before she began to cut the roast beef—
‘Well, I do call this a nice family party! All of us at home, and Mamma too!’
This did not quite seem to break the ice, and Mrs. Goodford looked in some contempt at her daughter with her eyes, little and red and wicked like an elephant’s. Her face was so deeply wrinkled that her features were almost invisible in the network, but what there was of them was exceedingly sharp. She had taken off her bonnet, a sign that she meant to stop all afternoon, and showed a head very sparsely covered with white hair: at the back of it was fixed on a small bun of bright auburn, which no doubt had been the colour of her hair some forty years ago. This bun always fascinated John: it was impossible to conjecture how it was attached to his grandmother’s head.
Mrs. Goodford ate a slice of hot beef in dead silence, with a circular mill-like motion of her chin. It disappeared before her daughter had time to begin eating on her own account, which gave her an opportunity for another attempt to thaw the glacial silence that presided over the nice family party.
‘Well, and there’s Mamma finished her slice of beef already! What a blessing a good appetite is, to be sure! You’ll let me give you another slice, Mamma, won’t you?’
Mrs. Goodford had pointedly taken a place next her daughter, which was as far as she could get from Mr. Keeling, and, still without speaking, she advanced her plate up to the edge of the dish. Again she ate in silence, and pushed her Yorkshire pudding to the extreme edge of her plate.
‘Nasty, mushy stuff,’ she observed. ‘I’d as soon eat a poultice.’
John, who had scarcely taken his eyes off the bun, putting his food into his mouth by general sense of locality only, suddenly gave a hiccupy kind of gasp. Mrs. Goodford, exhilarated by beef, turned her elephant-eyes on him.
‘I don’t quite catch what you said, John,’ she remarked. ‘Perhaps you can tell me what the sermon was about this morning.’
‘Hell, Granny,’ said John cheerfully.
Mrs. Goodford began to grow slightly more bellicose.
‘Your father would like that,’ she observed.
Hitherto Mr. Keeling had devoted his mind to his own immediate concerns which were those of eating. He had no wish to get worried with Mrs. Goodford, but it seemed that mere politeness required an answer to this.
‘I found it an excellent sermon,’ he said, with admirable neutrality; ‘I only hope that Mr—Mr. Silverdale will give us such good ones.’
Mrs. Goodford scrutinised the faces of her grandchildren. Her eye fell on Alice.
‘We must find a wife for him,’ she said. ‘I dare say we shall be able to fit him out with a wife. He seems a polite sort of young man too. I shouldn’t wonder if plenty of our Bracebridge young ladies would be willing to become Mrs. Silverside, or whatever the man’s name is.’
‘Dear me, Mamma!’ said Mrs. Keeling, ‘you talk as if the gentleman was a bit of beef.’
‘Mostly bones, as far as I could see,’ said Mrs. Goodford, still not taking her little eyes off Alice. ‘There wasn’t much beef on them.’
‘Well, I hope he’ll get a good meal this evening,’ said Mrs. Keeling. ‘He’s taking his supper with us.’
‘Ah, I dare say he’ll find something he likes,’ said this dreadful old lady, observing with malicious pleasure that Alice’s colour, as she would have phrased it, ‘was mounting.’
A certain measure of relief came to poor Alice at this moment, for she observed that everybody had finished the meat-course, and she and Hugh (who had at present escaped the lash of his grandmother’s tongue) and John hastily got up and began changing their elders’ plates, and removing dishes. This was the custom of Sunday lunch at Mrs. Keeling’s, and a Sabbatarian design of saving the servants trouble lay at the back of it. The detail of which it took no account was that it gave Hugh and Alice and John three times as much trouble as it would have given the servants, for they made endless collisions with each other as they went round the table; two of them simultaneously tried to drag the roast beef away in opposite directions, and the gravy spoon, tipped up by John’s elbow, careered through the air with a comet-tail of congealed meat-juice behind it. Ominous sounds of side-slip from heaped plates and knives came from the dinner wagon, where the used china was piled, and some five minutes of arduous work, filled with bumpings and crashings and occasional spurts of suppressed laughter from John, who, like a true wit, was delighted with his own swift and disconcerting reply to his Granny, were needful to effect the changes required for the discussion of plum tart and that strange form of refreshment known as ‘cold shape.’ During these resonant minutes further conversation between the elders was impossible, but Mrs. Goodford was not wasting her time, but saving up, storing her forces, reviewing her future topics.
It was obvious by this time that the family lunch was going to be rather a stormy sort of passage, and Mrs. Keeling had before this caught her husband’s eye, and with dumb movements of her lips and querying eyebrows had communicated ‘Champagne?’ to him, for it was known that when Mrs. Goodford was in a worrying mood, a glass of that agreeable beverage often restored her to almost fatuous good humour. But her husband had replied aloud, ‘Certainly not,’ and assumed his grimmest aspect. This did not look well: as a rule he was content to suffer Mrs. Goodford’s most disagreeable humours in contemptuous silence. Now and then, however, and his wife was afraid that this was one of those tempestuous occasions, he was in no mind to lie prone under insults levelled at him across his own table.
Mrs. Goodford being helped first, poured the greater part of the cream over her tart, and began on Hugh. Hugh would have been judged by a sentimental school-girl to be much the best looking of all the Keelings, for the resemblance between him and the wax types of manly beauty which used to appear in the windows of hairdressers’ establishments was so striking as to be almost uncanny. You wondered if there was a strain of hairdresser blood in his ancestors. He had worked himself up from the lowest offices in his father’s stores; he had been boy-messenger for the delivery of parcels, he had sold behind the counters, he had been through the accountant’s office, he had travelled on behalf of the business, and knew the working of it all from A to Z. In course of time he would become General Manager, and his father felt that in his capable hands it was not likely that the business would deteriorate. He spoke little, and usually paused before he spoke, and when he spoke he seldom made a mistake. The brilliance of his appearance was backed by a solid and sensible mind.
‘And they tell me you’re going to be married next, Hugh,’ said Mrs. Goodford.
Hugh considered this.
‘I
