FullReads

Alice only threw her chin in the air, and said almost threateningly,

“Am I to go for the month, sir?”

“I’ll talk to your mistress about it,” answered Mr. Greatorex, not at all sure that such an arrangement would be for his wife’s comfort.

But the next day Mrs. Greatorex had a long talk with Alice, and the result was that on the following Monday she was to go home for a month, and then return for two months more at least. What Mr. Greatorex had said about the legacy, had had its effect, and, besides, her mistress had spoken to her with pleasure in her good fortune. About Sophy no one felt any anxiety: she was no trouble to any one, and the housemaid would see to her.

CHAPTER III.

On the Sunday evening, Alice’s lover, having heard, not from herself, but by a side wind, that she was going home the next day, made his appearance in Wimborne Square, somewhat perplexed–both at the move, and at her leaving him in ignorance of the same. He was a cabinet-maker in an honest shop in the neighbourhood, and in education, faculty, and general worth, considerably Alice’s superior–a fact which had hitherto rather pleased her, but now gave zest to the change which she imagined had subverted their former relation. Full of the sense of her new superiority, she met him draped in an indescribable strangeness. John Jephson felt, at the very first word, as if her voice came from the other side of the English Channel. He wondered what he had done, or rather what Alice could imagine he had done or said, to put her in such tantrums.

“Alice, my dear,” he said–for John was a man to go straight at the enemy, “what’s amiss? What’s come over you? You ain’t altogether like your own self to-night! And here I find you’re goin’ away, and ne’er a word to me about it! What have I done?”

Alice’s chin alone made reply. She waited the fitting moment, with splendour to astonish, and with grandeur to subdue her lover. To tell the sad truth, she was no longer sure that it would be well to encourage him on the old footing; was she not standing on tiptoe, her skirts in her hand, on the brink of the brook that parted serfdom from gentility, on the point of stepping daintily across, and leaving domestic slavery, red hands, caps, and obedience behind her? How then was she to marry a man that had black nails, and smelt of glue? It was incumbent on her at least, for propriety’s sake, to render him at once aware that it was in condescension ineffable she took any notice of him.

“Alice, my girl!” began John again, in expostulatory tone.

“Miss Cox, if you please, John Jephson,” interposed Alice.

“What on ‘arth’s come over you?” exclaimed John, with the first throb of rousing indignation. “But if you ain’t your own self no more, why, Miss Cox be it. ‘T seems to me ‘s if I warn’t my own self no more–‘s if I’d got into some un else, or ‘t least hedn’t got my own ears on m’ own head.–Never saw or heerd Alice like this afore!” he added, turning in gloomy bewilderment to the housemaid for a word of human sympathy.

The movement did not altogether please Alice, and she felt she must justify her behaviour.

“You see, John,” she said, with dignity, keeping her back towards him, and pretending to dust the globe of a lamp, “there’s things as no woman can help, and therefore as no man has no right to complain of them. It’s not as if I’d gone an’ done it, or changed myself, no more ‘n if it ‘ad took place in my cradle. What can I help it, if the world goes and changes itself? Am I to blame?–tell me that. It’s not that. I make no complaint, but I tell you it ain’t me, it’s circumstances as is gone and changed theirselves, and bein’ as circumstances is changed, things ain’t the same as they was, and Miss is the properer term from you to me, John Jephson.”