Supper was set for three!

‘Well,’ I reflected.  ’Here’s a nice state of affairs!  Supper for three, and she hasn’t breathed a word!’

My mother was so clever in social matters, and especially in the planning of delicious surprises, that I believed her capable even of miracles.  In some way or other she must have discovered the state of my desires towards Agnes.  She had written, or something.  She and Agnes had been plotting together by letter to startle me, and perhaps telegraphing.  Agnes had fibbed in telling me that she could not possibly come to Bursley for Christmas; she had delightfully fibbed.  And my mother had got her concealed somewhere in the house, or was momentarily expecting her.  That explained the tears, the nervousness, the rushes to the door.

I crept out of the dining-room, determined not to let my mother know that I had secretly viewed the supper-table.  And as I was crossing the lobby to the drawing-room there was a third ring at the door, and a third time my mother rushed out of the kitchen.

‘By Jove!’ I thought.  ‘Suppose it’s Agnes.  What a scene!’

And trembling with expectation I opened the door.  It was Mr Nixon.

Now, Mr Nixon was an old friend of the family’s, a man of forty-nine or fifty, with a reputation for shrewdness and increasing wealth.  He owned a hundred and seventy-five cottages in the town, having bought them gradually in half-dozens, and in rows; he collected the rents himself, and attended to the repairs himself, and was celebrated as a good landlord, and as being almost the only man in Bursley who had made cottage property pay.  He lived alone in Commerce Street, and, though not talkative, was usually jolly, with one or two good stories tucked away in the corners of his memory.  He was my mother’s trustee, and had morally aided her in the troublous times before my father’s early death.

‘Well, young man,’ cried he.  ‘So you’re back in owd Bosley!’ It amused him to speak the dialect a little occasionally.

And he brought his burly, powerful form into the lobby.

I greeted him as jovially as I could, and then he shook hands with my mother, neither of them speaking.

‘Mr Nixon is come for supper, Philip,’ said my mother.

I liked Mr Nixon, but I was not too well pleased by this information, for I wanted to talk confidentially to my mother.  I had a task before me with my mother, and here Mr Nixon was plunging into the supper.  I could not break it gently to my mother that I was engaged to a strange young woman in the presence of Mr Nixon.  Mr Nixon had been in to supper several times during previous visits of mine, but never on the first night.

However, I had to make the best of it.  And we sat down and began on the ham, the sausages, the eggs, the crumpets, the toast, the jams, the mince-tarts, the Stilton, and the celery.  But we none of us ate very much, despite my little plump mother’s protestations.