illustrating the operation of vegetables and feminine duplicity upon the concepts of maternal responsibility

i felt that i was on sufficiently intimate terms with mrs albert grundy to tell her that she was not looking well. she gave a weary little sigh and said she knew it.

indeed, poor lady, it was apparent enough. she has taken of late to wearing her hair drawn up from her forehead over a roll—the effect of mouse-tints at which nature is beginning to hint, being frankly helped out by powder. everybody about fernbank recognises that in some way this reform has altered the whole state of affairs. the very servant who comes to the door, or who brings in the tea-things, seems to carry herself in a different manner since the change has been made. of course, it is by no means a new fashion, but it was not until the dowager countess of thames-ditton brought it in person to fernbank that mrs albert could be quite sure of its entire suitability. up to that time it had seemed to her a style rather adapted to lady lecturers and the wives of men who write: and though mrs albert has the very highest regard for literature—quite dotes on it, as she says—she is somewhat inclined to sniff at its wives.

we all feel that the change adds character to mrs albert’s face—or rather exhibits now that true managing and resourceful temper, which was formerly obscured and weakened by a fringe. but the new arrangement has the defects of its qualities. it does not lend itself to tricks. the countenance beneath it does not easily dissemble anxiety or mask fatigue. and both were written broadly over mrs albert’s fine face. “yes,” she said, “i know it.”

the consoling suggestion that soon the necessity of giving home-dinners to the directors in her husband’s companies would have ended, and that then a few weeks out of london, away somewhere in the air of the mountains or the sea, would bring back all her wonted strength and spirits, did no good. she shook her head and sighed again.

“no,” she said, “it isn’t physical. that is to say, it is physical, but the cause is mental. it is over-worry.”

“of all people on earth—you!” i replied reproachfully. “why think of it—a husband who is the dream of docile propriety, a competency broadening each year into a fortune, a home like this, such servants, such appointments, such a circle of admiring friends—and then your daughters! why, to be the mother of such a girl as ermyntrude———-”

“precisely,” interrupted mrs albert. “to be the mother of such a girl, as you say. little you know what it really means! but, no—i know what you were going to say—please don’t! it is too sad a subject.”

i could do nothing but feebly strive to look my surprise. to think of sadness connected with tall, handsome, good-hearted ermie, was impossible.

“you think i am exaggerating, i know,” mrs albert went on. “ah, you do not know!”

“nothing could be more evident,” i replied, “than that i don’t know. i can’t even imagine what on earth you are driving at.”

mrs albert paused for a moment, and pushed the toe of her wee slipper meditatively back and forth on the figure of the carpet.

“yes, i will tell you,” she said at last. “you are such an old friend of the family that you are almost one of us. and besides, you are always sympathetic—so different from dudley. well, the point is this. you know the young man—sir watkyn’s son—mr eustace hump.”

“i have met him here,” i assented.

“well, i doubt if you will meet him here any more,” mrs albert said, impressively.

“the deprivation shall not drive me to despair or drink,” i assured her. “i will watch over myself.”

“i dare say you did not care much for him,” said mrs albert. “i know dudley didn’t. but, all the same, he was eligible. he is an only son, and his father is a baronet—an hereditary title—and they are rolling in wealth. and eustace himself, when you get to know him, has some very admirable qualities. you know he writes!”

“i have heard him say so,” i responded, perhaps not over graciously.

“o, regularly, for a number of weekly papers. it is understood that quite frequently he gets paid—not of course that that matters to him—but his associations are distinctly literary. i have always felt that with his tastes and connections his wife—granting of course that she was the right kind of woman—might at last set up a real literary salon in london. we have wanted one so long, you know.”

“have we?” i murmured listlessly, striving all the while to guess what relation all this bore to the question of ermyntrude. i built up in my mind a hostile picture of the odious hump, with his shoulders sloping off like a german wine-bottle, his lean neck battlemented in high starched walls of linen, and his foolish conceited face—and leaped hopefully to the conclusion that ermyntrude had rejected him. i could not keep the notion to myself.

“well—has she sent him about his business?” i asked, making ready to beam with delight.

“no,” said mrs albert, ruefully. “it never got to that, so far as i can gather—but at all events it is all over. i expect every morning now to read the announcement in the morning post that a marriage has been arranged between him and—and—miss wallaby!”

i sat upright, and felt myself smiling. “what!—the girl with the black ribbon round her neck?” i asked comfortably.

“it would be more appropriate round her heart,” remarked mrs albert, with bitterness in her tone. “why, do you know? her mother, for all that she’s lady wallaby, hasn’t an ‘h’ in her whole composition.”

“well, neither has old sir watkyn hump,” i rejoined pleasantly. “so it’s a fair exchange.”

“ah, but he can afford it,” put in mrs albert. “but the wallabys—well, i can only say that i had a right to look for different treatment at their hands. how, do you suppose, they would ever have been asked to the hon. mrs coon-alwyn’s garden-party, or met lady thames-ditton, or been put in society generally, if i had not taken an interest in them? why, that girl’s father, old sir willoughby wallaby, was never anything but chief of police, or something like that, out in some australian convict settlement. i have heard he was knighted by mistake, but of course my lips are sealed.”

“i suppose they really have behaved badly,” i said, half interrogatively.

“badly!” echoed the wrathful mother. “i will leave you to judge. it was done here, quite under my own roof. you know miss wallaby volunteered her services, and went down into the retired licensed victuallers’ division of surrey to electioneer for sir watkyn. do you know, i never suspected anything. and then miss timby-hucks, she went down also, but they rather cold-shouldered her, and she came back, and she told me things, and still i wouldn’t believe it. well then—three weeks ago—my evening at home—you were here—the wallabys came as large as life, and that scheming young person manoeuvred about until she got herself alone with eustace and my ermyntrude, and then she told her a scene she had witnessed during her recent election experiences. there was a meeting for sir watkyn at some place, i can’t recall the name, and there were a good many of the other side there, and they hooted and shouted, and raised disturbance, until at last there was one speaker they would not hear at all. all this that girl told ermyntrude seriously, and as if she were overflowing with indignation. and then she came to the part where the speaker stood his ground and tried to make himself heard, and the crowd yelled louder than ever, and still he doggedly persisted—and then someone threw a large vegetable marrow, soft and very ripe, and it hit that speaker just under the ear, and burst all over him!”

“ha-ha-ha!” i ejaculated. “the vegetable marrow in politics is new—full of delightful possibilities and seeds—wonder it has never been thought of before.”

“yes,” said mrs albert, with a sigh. “ermyntrude also thought it was funny. she has a very keen sense of humour—quite too keen. she laughed, too!”

“and why not?” i asked.

“why not?” demanded mrs albert, with shining eyes. “because the story had been told just to trap her into laughing—because—because the speaker upon whom that unhappy vegetable marrow exploded was—eustace hump!”