“After a fashion, I am, mother; but there, don’t talk so much. Drink your warm coffee. I’ll have a nice rasher of bacon and an egg done for you in a jiffy.”
“I can’t abear them cooking eggs,” said the old lady. “I’ll have a bit of bacon if you do it crisp and tasty. I traveled up without any fret or worry, and slept the whole of the way. What a queer, extravagant thing you was to say I might come first class. Not me! I traveled third. I’d like to see myself first. It wouldn’t seem respectful to the quality.”
Clara did not reply. She knew her mother’s ways.
“There’s no necessity to be so very close about money now,” she said, after a long pause. “I’m doing well and I want you to have all comforts.”
“You’re doing well when you give up your profession? It looks like it. Are you gwine to be married?”
“Well, that’s about it, mother. You’ve hit the nail on the head now. I am.
“Tell me all about it, Clara,” said the old lady. “I love to hear a right good rattling love story. Is it to the grocer, or the fishmonger, or the baker? I always said you’d do well in a shop. You’re the sort to draw customers, though you are plain, to be sure. Your freckles seem to have spread. Can’t you get a lotion to take ’em off? They’re not at all becoming.”
“Dear me, mother, don’t mind about my freckles now. I was born with them, and they must stay on my face!”
“That they must, Clara, and it’s wrong for me to grumble, but I did fret about them freckles when you was a little tot. Dear heart! I used to dream of ’em at nights. I used to say, they’ll come between her and matrimony—such a plague of ’em as you had—but now it seems I was all wrong. Maybe freckles have come into fashion. Who’s the lucky man, Clara?”
“He’s not the baker, nor the grocer, nor the fishmonger,” said Clara quietly. “Here, mother, eat your bacon. I’ll tell you everything afterwards.”
While Mrs. Ives enjoyed her breakfast, the nurse withdrew into the inner room and began to dress little Piers.
“I’m ever so well,” said the boy. “I’m going out for a bit to-day.”
“That doesn’t matter. You can send for my carriage. I always drive in the brougham on wet days. Nurse, who was that person you were talking to? I heard a voice keep chattering and chattering. Whose was it?”