The Incomplete Amorist | Page 2

first.
"I was just a-goin' to say why not close the door, that being what doors is made for, after all," said Mrs. Symes. "I feel a sort of draught a-creeping up my legs as it is."
The door was shut.
"You can't be too careful," said the red-faced woman; "we never know what a chill mayn't bring forth. My cousin's sister-in-law, she had twins, and her aunt come in and says she, 'You're a bit stuffy here, ain't you?' and with that she opens the window a crack,--not meaning no harm, Miss,--as it might be you. And within a year that poor unfortunate woman she popped off, when least expected. Gas ulsters, the doctor said. Which it's what you call chills, if you're a doctor and can't speak plain."
"My poor grandmother come to her end the same way," said Mrs. Smith, "only with her it was the Bible reader as didn't shut the door through being so set on shewing off her reading. And my granny, a clot of blood went to her brain, and her brain went to her head and she was a corpse inside of fifty minutes."
Every woman in the room was waiting, feverishly alert, for the pause that should allow her to begin her own detailed narrative of disease.
Mrs. James was easily first in the competition.
"Them quick deaths," she said, "is sometimes a blessing in disguise to both parties concerned. My poor husband--years upon years he lingered, and he had a bad leg--talk of bad legs, I wish you could all have seen it," she added generously.
"Was it the kind that keeps all on a-breaking out?" asked Mrs. Symes hastily, "because my youngest brother had a leg that nothing couldn't stop. Break out it would do what they might. I'm sure the bandages I've took off him in a morning--"
Betty clapped her hands.
It was the signal that the reading was going to begin, and the matrons looked at her resentfully. What call had people to start reading when the talk was flowing so free and pleasant?
Betty, rather pale, began: "This is a story about a little boy called Wee Willie Winkie."
"I call that a silly sort of name," whispered Mrs. Smith.
"Did he make a good end, Miss?" asked Mrs. James plaintively.
"You'll see," said Betty.
"I like it best when they dies forgiving of everybody and singing hymns to the last."
"And when they says, 'Mother, I shall meet you 'ereafter in the better land'--that's what makes you cry so pleasant."
"Do you want me to read or not?" asked Betty in desperation.
"Yes, Miss, yes," hummed the voices heavy and shrill.
"It's her hobby, poor young thing," whispered Mrs. Smith, "we all 'as 'em. My own is a light cake to my tea, and always was. Ush."
Betty read.
When the mothers had wordily gone, she threw open the windows, propped the door wide with a chair, and went to tea. She had it alone.
"Your Pa's out a-parishing," said Letitia, bumping down the tray in front of her.
"That's a let-off anyhow," said Betty to herself, and she propped up a Stevenson against the tea-pot.
After tea parishioners strolled up by ones and twos and threes to change their books at the Vicarage lending library. The books were covered with black calico, and smelt of rooms whose windows were never opened.
When she had washed the smell of the books off, she did her hair very carefully in a new way that seemed becoming, and went down to supper.
Her step-father only spoke once during the meal; he was luxuriating in the thought of the Summa Theologiae of Aquinas in leather still brown and beautiful, which he had providentially discovered in the wash-house of an ailing Parishioner. When he did speak he said:
"How extremely untidy your hair is, Lizzie. I wish you would take more pains with your appearance."
When he had withdrawn to his books she covered three new volumes for the library: the black came off on her hands, but anyway it was clean dirt.
She went to bed early.
"And that's my life," she said as she blew out the candle.
Said Mrs. James to Mrs. Symes over the last and strongest cup of tea:
"Miss Betty's ailing a bit, I fancy. Looked a bit peaky, it seemed to me. I shouldn't wonder if she was to go off in a decline like her father did."
"It wasn't no decline," said Mrs. Symes, dropping her thick voice, "'e was cut off in the midst of his wicked courses. A judgment if ever there was one."
Betty's blameless father had been killed in the hunting field.
"I daresay she takes after him, only being a female it all turns to her being pernickety in her food and allus wanting the windows open. And mark my words, it may turn into a decline yet, Mrs. Symes, my dear."
Mrs. Symes laughed fatly. "That ain't no decline," she