moved around her, on the outside of the circle, ministering to her wants. She had in her hand an outspread clean napkin, and she wore fastened round her dress a huge coarse apron, that she might thus be protected from some possible ebullition of gravy, or escape of salad mixture, or cream; but in other respects she was clothed in the fullest honours of widowhood. She had not mitigated her weeds by half an inch. She had scorned to make any compromise between the world of pleasure and the world of woe. There she was, a widow, declared by herself to be of four months’ standing, with a buried heart, making ready a dainty banquet with skill and liberality. She was ready on the instant to sit down upon the baskets in which the grouse pie had been just carefully inhumed, and talked about her sainted lamb with a deluge of tears. If anybody didn’t like it, that person—might do the other thing. Mr Cheesacre and Captain Bellfield thought that they did like it.
“Oh, Mr Cheesacre, if you haven’t caught me before I’ve half done! Captain Bellfield, I hope you think my apron becoming.”
“Everything that you wear, Mrs Greenow, is always becoming.”
“Don’t talk in that way when you know—; but never mind—we will think of nothing sad to-day if we can help it. Will we, Mr Cheesacre?”
“Oh dear no; I should think not;—unless it should come on to rain.”
“It won’t rain—we won’t think of such a thing. But, by the by, Captain Bellfield, I and my niece do mean to send out a few things, just in a bag you know, so that we may tidy ourselves up a little after the sea. I don’t want it mentioned, because if it gets about among the other ladies, they’d think we wanted to make a dressing of it;—and there wouldn’t be room for them all; would there?”
“No; there wouldn’t,” said Mr Cheesacre, who had been out on the previous evening, inspecting, and perhaps limiting, the carpenters in their work.
“That’s just it,” said Mrs Greenow. “But there won’t be any harm, will there, Mr Cheesacre, in Jeanette’s going out with our things? She’ll ride in the cart, you know, with the eatables. I know Jeannette’s a friend of yours.”
“We shall be delighted to have Jeanette,” said Mr Cheesacre.
“Thank ye, sir,” said Jeannette, with a curtsey.
“Jeannette, don’t you let Mr Cheesacre turn your head; and mind you behave yourself and be useful. Well; let me see;—what else is there? Mrs Jones, you might as well give me that ham now. Captain Bellfield, hand it over. Don’t you put it into the basket, because you’d turn it the wrong side down. There now, if you haven’t nearly made me upset the apricot pie.” Then, in the transfer of the dishes between the captain and the widow, there occurred some little innocent by-play, which seemed to give offence to Mr Cheesacre; so that that gentleman turned his back upon the hampers and took a step away towards the door.
Mrs Greenow saw the thing at a glance, and immediately applied herself to cure the wound. “What do you think, Mr Cheesacre,” said she, “Kate wouldn’t come down because she didn’t choose that you should see her with an apron on over her frock!”
“I’m sure I don’t know why Miss Vavasor should care about my seeing her.”
“Nor I either. That’s just what I said. Do step up into the drawing-room; you’ll find her there, and you can make her answer for herself.”
“She wouldn’t come down for me,” said Mr Cheesacre. But he didn’t stir. Perhaps he wasn’t willing to leave his friend with the widow.
At length the last of the dishes was packed and Mrs Greenow went upstairs with the two gentlemen. There they found Kate and two or three other ladies who had promised to embark under the protection of Mrs Greenow’s wings. There were the two Miss Fairstairs, whom Mrs Greenow had especially patronized, and who repaid that lady for her kindness by an amount of outspoken eulogy which startled Kate by its audacity.
“Your dear aunt!” Fanny Fairstairs had said on coming into the room. “I don’t think I ever came across a woman with such genuine milk of human kindness!”
“Nor with so much true wit,” said her sister Charlotte,—who had been called Charlie on the sands of Yarmouth for the last twelve years.
When the widow came into the room, they flew at her and devoured her with kisses, and swore that they had never seen her looking so well. But as the bright new gloves which both the girls wore had been presents from Mrs Greenow, they certainly did owe her some affection. There are not many ladies who would venture to bestow such gifts upon their friends after so very short an acquaintance; but Mrs Greenow had a power that was quite her own in such matters. She was already on a very confidential footing with the Miss Fairstairs, and had given them much useful advice as to their future prospects.
And then was there a Mrs Green, whose husband was first-lieutenant on board a man-of-war on the West Indian Station. Mrs Green was a quiet, ladylike little woman, rather pretty, very silent, and, as one would have thought, hardly adapted for the special intimacy of Mrs Greenow. But Mrs Greenow had found out that she was alone, not very rich, and in want of the solace of society. Therefore she had, from sheer goodnature, forced herself upon Mrs Green, and Mrs Green, with much trepidation, had consented to be taken to the picnic. “I know your husband would like it,” Mrs Greenow had said, “and I hope I may live to tell him that I made you go.”
There came in also a brother of the Fairstairs girls, Joe Fairstairs, a lanky, useless, idle young man, younger than them, who was supposed to earn his bread in an attorney’s office at Norwich, or rather to be preparing to earn it at some future time, and who was a heavy burden upon all his friends. “We told Joe to come to the house,” said Fanny to the widow, apologetically, “because we thought he might be useful in carrying down the cloaks.” Mrs Greenow smiled graciously upon Joe, and assured him that she was charmed to see him, without any reference to such services as those mentioned.
And then they started. When they got to the door both Cheesacre and the captain made an attempt to get possession of the widow’s arm. But she had it all arranged. Captain Bellfield found himself constrained to attend to Mrs Green, while Mr Cheesacre walked down to the beach beside Kate Vavasor. “I’ll take your arm, Mr Joe,” said the widow, “and the girls shall come with us.” But when they got to the boats, round which the other comers to the picnic were already assembled, Mr Cheesacre,—although both the boats were for the day his own,—found himself separated from the widow. He got into that which contained Kate Vavasor, and was shoved off from the beach while he saw Captain Bellfield arranging Mrs Greenow’s drapery. He had declared to himself that it should be otherwise; and that as he had to pay the piper, the piper should play as he liked it. But Mrs Greenow with a word or two had settled it all, and Mr Cheesacre had found himself to be powerless. “How absurd Bellfield looks in that jacket, doesn’t he?” he said to Kate, as he took his seat in the boat.
“Do you think so? I thought it was so very pretty and becoming for the occasion.”
Mr Cheesacre hated Captain Bellfield, and regretted more than ever that he had not done something for his own personal adornment. He could not endure to think that his friend, who paid for nothing, should carry away the honours of the morning and defraud him of the delights which should justly belong to him, “It may be becoming,” said Cheesacre; “but don’t you think it’s awfully extravagant?”
“As to that I can’t tell. You see I don’t at all know what is the price of a jacket covered all over with little brass buttons.”
“And the waistcoat, Miss Vavasor!” said Cheesacre, almost
