Mrs. Day's Daughters Part 17

"Well, my dear?"

"Well, mama! You don't wish Deda to make herself conspicuous, I suppose?"

"Who says I make myself conspicuous?" an ireful Deleah demands. "Who has been saying anything about me?"

"I," the Manchester man hurriedly admits. "I did not say you were conspicuous, Miss Deleah. I only said I had seen you sitting there with your book--among the flowers."

"She is not to sit there again, mama. Will you please say so? Deda, you are not to sit in the window again. We can't help living above a grocer's shop, but we need not make a display of ourselves."

"If it offends Mr. Gibbon he does not need to look at the window. I shall certainly sit there if I wish."

"Come, come, my dears. There is enough about it. Pray let us have supper in peace."

"You've had a tiring day, ma'am," says Mr. Gibbon. "Let me persuade you to have a gla.s.s of ale with your beef, to-night. Just to revive you. Forcus's Family Ale is the finest pick-me-up."

"Reggie Forcus has ridden past three times this afternoon, mama," Bessie informed her parent. Then turned sharply on her sister, "You were at school, miss."

"I met him as I came away," said Deleah, seating herself at the table. "I wish the pleasure had been yours instead of mine, Bessie."

"Did he stop to speak?"

"Of course he stopped. He always stops."

"Well?"

"He asked for you."

"He always does, I suppose?"

"Always."

"There!" said Bessie on the note of triumph, looking round.

"There!" echoed Deleah as she helped herself to the mustard Mr. Gibbon was offering her.

"Mama, do you hear Deda? She is not to mock me."

"Bread, Miss Deleah? Pickles, Mrs. Day?" hastily interposes an obsequious Mr. Gibbon. He was a.s.siduous in his attentions on the ladies, ever anxiously polite and kind. That he found his happiness among them and was eager to gain and to retain their favour he plainly showed. If he sometimes jarred on their fastidiousness he did not know it.

"Any interesting incident in the day's trade, ma'am?" he asked, as he busied himself in supplying their wants.

Nothing much. The Quaker lady had been again for sugar. Again Mrs. Day had unconditionally pledged herself that the canes from which it had been derived had not been grown by slaves.

"And have they?" Deleah asked.

"I'm sure, my dear, I don't know if they have or they haven't," a hara.s.sed grocer-woman acknowledged. Her conscience was becoming blunted in the stress and strain of business life. "She took a pound of it as usual, and that's all I can say about it."

"But, mama! For the sake of the profit on a pound of sugar!"

"There's no profit on it at all, Bessie. If she had taken a quarter of a pound of tea with it there would have been three-ha'pence into our pockets. But she did not. So you see I perjured myself for nothing."

"Don't let the thought trouble you for an instant, ma'am," Mr. Gibbon advised. "None of us can afford to be too nice in trade. We've got to live, Miss Bessie. Customers don't think so--they'd skin us if they could--but we have. I'm of Mr. Boult's mind on that subject, although there isn't much I uphold him in. 'Let us do our best for the public while it pays reasonable prices,' he says, 'and when it won't, let us _do_ the public.'"

"All that is so low, Mr. Gibbon."

"But it's business, Miss Bessie. Business is low."

"Oh, don't let us talk about it now," Deleah pleads.

"Deleah has a secret. She's dying to tell us all," Deleah's mother said.

"It's something Deleah's been up to!"

"No, Bess. Calm yourself. Calm all yourselves."

"But how can we? Out with it, darling."

"It's nothing, mama."

"Nothing?"

"Only an idea of mine."

"Something you've been and made up, Deda!"

"Something I'm as sure of, Bessie, as I am that you're always dying to find fault with me. Thank you, Mr. Gibbon, I've got _three_ pieces of bread already, look!"

"You've handed Deleah bread three times in as many minutes, Mr. Gibbon."

"Hand the bread _only_ to Bessie, Mr. Gibbon. (Mama, I _must_ answer _sometimes_.")

"We're waiting for the secret, dear."

"It's about our mysterious presents, mama. Mr. Gibbon, you have heard us talk about our unknown benefactor who loads us with delightful things, and yet is so ungenerous he won't give us the pleasure of saying 'thank you.'"

Yes. Mr. Gibbon had heard that there was some one who sometimes sent Miss Deleah flowers.

"They're always sent to Deleah--but I suppose they're meant for all of us," Bessie said.

"And because they came in my name only, gave me the first clue," Deleah said. "Let me see, we began with violets, didn't we? And in January, when they were scarce and expensive. Lovely bunches of violets 'for Miss Deleah.' Miss Deleah's name done in printing characters, so that no one should discover by the handwriting. Then we went on to a basket of sweets--sweets of my very most particular kind, such as none of us can afford any longer to look at. Oh, my mouth waters to think of them even now! No, I didn't ask for any more water in my gla.s.s, thank you, Mr.

Gibbon."

"We all know what you had, Deleah; we thought we were going to hear who sent them."

"Patience! Patience, good people all! Let me see, what came next? Oh, the bird in the cage. And there he is still in his cage for you all to see,"

and Deleah leant back in her chair, and threw her pretty head over her shoulder to look at the canary hanging above the left-hand window where was her favourite seat. "Then the azalea. The lovely rose-pink azalea; and after that--oh, I forget. But always something coming--something that we cannot afford to buy, but which has made our sitting-room delightful; and horrid Bridge Street a bearable place to live in. Now you have all been dying to find out who it is that has given us these delightful things; but I have always known; and at last I am going to tell you."

"Then, if you knew you should have told us. Deda ought not to have been so sly about it, mama, if she knew."