It had been a wild, oddly-worded appeal to him to take her back, not--as Maud had at once perceived on reading the letter--because she was sorry for the terrible thing she had done, but simply because she was beginning to hanker after her children. Maud had described the letter as shameless and unwomanly in the extreme; and even William, who had never judged his pretty young sister-in-law as severely as his wife had always done, had observed sadly that Flossy seemed quite unaware of the magnitude of her offence against God and man.
Mr. Tapster, who prided himself on his sharp ears, suddenly heard a curious little sound--he knew it for that of the front door being first opened and then shut again, extremely quietly. He half rose from his chair by the fire, then sat down again, heavily.
By Maud's advice he always locked the area gate himself, when he came home each evening. But how foolish of Maud--such a sensible woman too,--to think that servants and their evil ways could be circumvented so easily! Of course, the maids went in and out by the front door in the evening, and the policeman--a most respectable officer standing at point duty a few yards lower down the road--must be well aware of these disgraceful "goings on."
For the first two or three months of his widowerhood (how else could he term his present peculiar wifeless condition?) there had been a constant coming and going of servants, first chosen, and then dismissed, by Maud. At last she had suggested that her brother-in-law should engage a lady housekeeper, and the luckless James Tapster had even interviewed several applicants for the post after they had been chosen--sifted out, as it were--by Maud. Unfortunately they had all been each more or less of his own age; and plain--very plain; while he, naturally enough, would have preferred to see something young and pretty about him again.
It was over this housekeeper question that he had at last escaped from Maud's domestic thraldom, for his sister-in-law, offended by his rejection of each of her candidates, had declared that she would take no more trouble about his household affairs! Nay, more; she had reminded him with a smile which she had honestly tried to make pleasant, that there is, after all, no fool like an old fool--about women! This insinuation had made Mr. Tapster very angry, and straightway he had engaged a respectable cook-housekeeper, and, although he had soon become aware that the woman was feathering her own nest,--James Tapster, as you will have divined ere now, was fond of good workaday phrases,--yet she had a pleasant, respectful manner, and kept rough order among the younger servants.