CHAPTER IV

At ten o’clock on the evening of Easter Sunday, Mrs. Mutimer was busy preparing supper.  She had laid the table for six, had placed at one end of it a large joint of cold meat, at the other a vast flee-pudding, already diminished by attack, and she was now slicing a conglomerate mass of cold potatoes and cabbage prior to heating it in the frying-pan, which hissed with melted dripping just on the edge of the fire.  The kitchen was small, and everywhere reflected from some bright surface either the glow of the open grate or the yellow lustre of the gas-jet; red curtains drawn across the window added warmth and homely comfort to the room.  It was not the kitchen of pinched or slovenly working folk; the air had a scent of cleanliness, of freshly scrubbed boards and polished metal, and the furniture was super-abundant.  On the capacious dresser stood or hung utensils innumerable; cupboards and chairs had a struggle for wall space; every smallest object was in the place assigned to it by use and wont.

The housewife was an active woman of something less than sixty; stout, fresh-featured, with a small keen eye, a firm mouth, and the look of one who, conscious of responsibilities, yet feels equal to them; on the whole a kindly and contented face, if lacking the suggestiveness which comes of thought.  At present she seemed on the verge of impatience; it was supper time, but her children lingered.

‘There they are, and there they must wait, I s’pose,’ she murmured to herself as she finished slicing the vegetables and went to remove the pan a little from the fire.

A knock at the house door called her upstairs.  She came down again, followed by a young girl of pleasant countenance, though pale and anxious-looking.  The visitor’s dress was very plain, and indicated poverty; she wore a long black jacket, untrimmed, a boa of cheap fur, tied at the throat with black ribbon, a hat of grey felt, black cotton gloves.

‘No one here?’ she asked, seeing the empty kitchen.

’Goodness knows where they all are.  I s’pose Dick’s at his meeting; but Alice and ’Arry had ought to be back by now.  Sit you down to the table, and I’ll put on the vegetables; there’s no call to wait for them.  Only I ain’t got the beer.’

‘Oh, but I didn’t mean to come for supper,’ said the girl, whose name was Emma Vine.  ’I only ran in to tell you poor Jane’s down again with rheumatic fever.’

Mrs. Mutimer was holding the frying-pan over the fire, turning the contents over and over with a knife.

‘You don’t mean that!’ she exclaimed, looking over her shoulder.  ‘Why, it’s the fifth time, ain’t it?’

’It is indeed, and worse to get through every time.  We didn’t expect she’d ever be able to walk again last autumn.’

’Dear, dear! what a thing them rheumatics is, to be sure!  And you’ve heard about Dick, haven’t you?’