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Page 3
"Oh yes," said Mrs. Wilkins. And she repeated, her head on its
long thin neck drooping a little as if the recollection of Hampstead
bowed her, "Oh yes."
"Where?" asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, who, when advice was needed,
naturally first proceeded to collect the facts.
But Mrs. Wilkins, laying her hand softly and caressingly on the
part of The Times where the advertisement was, as though the mere
printed words of it were precious, only said, "Perhaps that is why this
seems so wonderful."
"No--I think that's wonderful anyhow," said Mrs. Arbuthnot,
forgetting facts and faintly sighing.
"Then you were reading it?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, her eyes going dreamy again.
"Wouldn't it be wonderful?" murmured Mrs. Wilkins.
"Wonderful," said Mrs. Arbuthnot. Her face, which had lit up,
faded into patience again. "Very wonderful," she said. "But it's no
use wasting one's time thinking of such things."
"Oh, but it is," was Mrs. Wilkins's quick, surprising reply;
surprising because it was so much unlike the rest of her--the
characterless coat and skirt, the crumpled hat, the undecided wisp of
hair straggling out, "And just the considering of them is worth while
in itself--such a change from Hampstead--and sometimes I believe--I
really do believe--if one considers hard enough one gets things."
Mrs. Arbuthnot observed her patiently. In what category would
she, supposing she had to, put her?
"Perhaps," she said, leaning forward a little, "you will tell me
your name. If we are to be friends"--she smiled her grave smile--"as I
hope we are, we had better begin at the beginning."
"Oh yes--how kind of you. I'm Mrs. Wilkins," said Mrs. Wilkins.
"I don't expect," she added, flushing, as Mrs. Arbuthnot said nothing,
"that it conveys anything to you. Sometimes it--it doesn't seem to
convey anything to me either. But"--she looked round with a movement
of seeking help--"I am Mrs. Wilkins."
She did not like her name. It was a mean, small name, with a
kind of facetious twist, she thought, about its end like the upward
curve of a pugdog's tail. There it was, however. There was no doing
anything with it. Wilkins she was and Wilkins she would remain; and
though her husband encouraged her to give it on all occasions as Mrs.
Mellersh-Wilkins she only did that when he was within earshot, for she
thought Mellersh made Wilkins worse, emphasizing it in the way
Chatsworth on the gate-posts of a villa emphasizes the villa.
When first he suggested she should add Mellersh she had objected
for the above reason, and after a pause--Mellersh was much too prudent
to speak except after a pause, during which presumably he was taking a
careful mental copy of his coming observation--he said, much
displeased, "But I am not a villa," and looked at her as he looks who
hopes, for perhaps the hundredth time, that he may not have married a
fool.
Of course he was not a villa, Mrs. Wilkins assured him; she had
never supposed he was; she had not dreamed of meaning . . . she was
only just thinking . . .
The more she explained the more earnest became Mellersh's hope,
familiar to him by this time, for he had then been a husband for two
years, that he might not by any chance have married a fool; and they
had a prolonged quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which is
conducted with dignified silence on one side and earnest apology on the
other, as to whether or no Mrs. Wilkins had intended to suggest that
Mr. Wilkins was a villa.
"I believe," she had thought when it was at last over--it took a
long while--"that anybody would quarrel about anything when they've not
left off being together for a single day for two whole years. What we
both need is a holiday."
"My husband," went on Mrs. Wilkins to Mrs. Arbuthnot, trying to
throw some light on herself, "is a solicitor. He--" She cast about for
something she could say elucidatory of Mellersh, and found: "He's very
handsome."
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