'I thought as much,' said Jesse, interrupting her mother, 'the bread pills were certain to be rolled forth.'
'_Bread_ pills, my dear!' exclaimed Mrs. Jones indignantly; 'your lamented father was not the man to prescribe bread to Royalty. I do not relish this tone. Had it not been for professional rivalry, your father would have had a baronetcy conferred on him, and I should have been Lady Tomkin-Jones. The pills did it.'
'Rather, they did not do it,' asserted the irrepressible Jesse.
Mrs. Tomkin-Jones drew her lips together as though about to whistle. This was expressive of indignation. She said no more on the matter, but sighed.
The lady was wont to sigh when her mental corns were trodden on.
She had stiffened her back in pride as she approached the chemist's shop. It became stiffer with indignation at her daughter's levity and lack of reverence. But the shop passed, she relaxed, and sank back into a dignified position, and said, 'Ah! by the way, what is her name?'
'For heaven's sake, do not address me as ma'am.'
'That is almost worse; it stamps a person at once. Only servants of lodging-house type address one thus. Neither, if you please.'
'And, I presume, you have fallen into the habit of calling her mother or mamma?'
'I did not fall into it, I grew up with it.'
'Most reprehensible, but under the circumstances explicable and excusable. That sort of female is given to presume and push, and requires to be taught its place. I have little doubt she did her utmost to spoil you.'
Winefred was choking; anger, resentment swelled her heart.
'That sort of female,' said Winefred in a quivering voice, 'is one to love and reverence.'
Jesse saw that something had gone wrong. She touched her mother with her foot and shook her head.
'Well, it is flattering to the self-esteem of individuals of an inferior order to have a child of good blood and name in their charge and to be able to attach it to them. But you ought to have called her Marley, or nurse――no more.'
The tears filled the girl's eyes, the colour rose and fell in her cheeks as mercury in a barometer before a hurricane.
Jesse, who saw her distress, and was vexed with her mother, said, so as to produce a diversion, 'Now, mother, the story of the pills――anything but this Catechism on your Duty to your Inferiors.'