Her seventeenth birthday was past now, and it seemed to her mother that her young daughter had grown of a still more exceeding prettiness. Poor Mrs. Day often longed for a sympathetic ear into which to breathe her maternal admiration. With Bessie the subject of Deleah's beauty was like a red rag to a bull. Emily, the general and confidential friend of the family, was not an altogether satisfactory confidante on that matter, because in her eyes, blinded by affection, the whole family was equally beautiful.
"You've got handsome children, ma'am. I've knowed it since folk used to crowd round my pram to have a look at them when I wheeled 'em out, times gone by, as babies. Ofttimes the pavement got blocked, as you've heard me mention before. There's no two opinions about their looks, and we know which side they got them from."
There were no two opinions about that, at any rate. Not even the most charitable critic could have credited poor William Day with good looks; and the tired pathetic face of his widow was a handsome face still.
Having been permitted to take his place among them, and to chop material for mincemeat at their kitchen table, it was felt by them all that their boarder could never be a stranger to the widow and her children again. Through pride and through shyness they had held him at arm's length, but now that they had joked together about George Boult's peculiarities, and he had ventured with playful force to take the nutmeg grater from Bessie's weary fingers, valiantly completing her task himself, it would have been impossible, even if desirable, to return to their earlier relations.
Bessie, who had treated him with a carefully masked hauteur in the beginning, was among the first to place him on terms of easy familiarity. She had strongly resented the inclusion of a stranger in their family circle, and presently was welcoming his presence there as supplying the one item of interest in the _ménage_.
"A year ago, mama, we should not have admitted Mr. Boult's Manchester man to the same table with us. And now, here we are keeping his plates hot, if he comes in late, and telling him all our secrets."
"Mama and I don't tell Mr. Gibbon any secrets," Deleah said.
"I dare say Mr. Gibbon does not want to hear them. As for me I find, when you live in the same house with a man, it's impossible to keep him at arm's length."
