However few of the graces may have fallen to her lot, she was certainly not lacking in the domestic virtues. When the maid departed with her tin trunk and many tearful protestations of her devotion to the memory of the dear mistress, Aunt Laura turned up her sleeves and took possession of the kitchen, and Mr. Ingleby, who had gloomily anticipated a domestic wilderness, found that in spite of the maid’s defection, ambrosial food appeared before him like manna from heaven, the only difference being that Uncle Albert, who could not be permitted for one moment to remain a bachelor, took his meals with the family.
The relation between Edwin and Aunt Laura was still difficult. She could not forget—and he could not withdraw—the bitter things that had been said on that most mournful day, though her native good humour, which was profuse and blustery like the rest of her, made it difficult for her to maintain an attitude of injured benignance. Even Edwin had to admit that she was a good cook; but the excellence of her food was qualified by her incessant chatter and her nervous laugh. Edwin simply couldn’t stick them; but it amazed him to find that Uncle Albert evidently found them cheerful and reassuring. Indeed, it was possibly one of the reasons why he had fallen in love with her, being a man who resembled her in nothing and whose enthusiasms could never get him beyond a couple of words and a giggle.
Mr. Ingleby too seemed to emerge without serious irritation from this diurnal bath of small-talk, retiring, as Edwin supposed, to certain gloomy depths of his own consciousness where the froth and bubble of Aunt Laura’s conversation became imperceptible. Even when she spoke to him directly—though most of her observations were addressed to the world in general—he would not trouble to answer her: a slight which Aunt Laura took quite good-humouredly.
“Bless you,” she would have said, “the man’s so wrapped up in himself that he’s miles away from anywhere. Of course you can understand it in a man of his age, especially when you realise how devoted he was to poor Beatrice”—Mrs. Ingleby’s name might never now escape the commiserating prefix—“but when a boy like Edwin tries it on it’s another matter altogether. It’s simply conceit. Personally, I think it was a great mistake of his poor mother’s to send him to St. Luke’s. The grammar school’s good enough for the Willises. A great mistake. . . . The boy is getting ideas of himself that aren’t warranted by his position. I don’t know what we are to do with him. We certainly can’t have him running wild here.” And Uncle Albert would say: “Certainly, certainly, my love. . . .”