Mrs. Day's Daughters by Mann, Mary E., -1929

"You'd rather be looking at your three-yard-square of croquet-lawn than at Deleah Day in the Forcuses' carriage, Gibbon?"

Gibbon plucked a leaf from the hedge and put it in his mouth, but made no reply to the facetious remark.

"What are they doing, driving their horses, and dragging out their servants in the middle of a Sunday afternoon?"

They went sometimes, in the afternoon, to a service at the Cathedral, Gibbon, who in spite of being habitually at the back of the house evidently knew something of the Forcuses' movements, was able to communicate.

"Little Miss Deleah thinks a mighty lot of herself, seated up there in state."

He should not think so, Gibbon said. "What is she but a servant there? She was a far greater lady, to my thinking, when she sat in the room over her mother's shop."

"It's Bessie that should ride in her carriage," Mr. Boult declared.

"Perhaps she will," said Gibbon, and looked at his partner, who met the other's eyes hardily.

"If she does," he said with sudden bluster, "the fool that owns the carriage is a ruined man. Mark my words. Extravagant, idle young woman. Die in the workhouse--that's what Bessie Day will do. Look here, Gibbon; you know how things are; you know all I've done for them. I could put up the shutters of the shop to-morrow, and they could not help theirselves. Bessie knows it too. I have not made a secret of these things. She knows I hold them in the hollow of my hand. Yet to hear her cheek me! The daring of it! Gibbon," he touched the younger man's shoulder with the stiff finger of his thick hand, "I used to think that you--eh?"

"No," said Gibbon, with decision.

"Nice little place all ready--when you've spent a few pounds more--?"

"No, thank you."

"Is that so?" Boult said, and pressed his lips together, nodding his head and seeming to take time to turn the information over in his mind. Then he leant forward, and again touched the other's shoulder, tapping it two or three times by way of emphasis. "You're wise," he said, confidentially. "Take my word for it, Gibbon, you're wise. If I were a marrying man, which, thank Heaven, I am not, I wouldn't risk marrying Bessie Day if there was not another woman on earth."

CHAPTER XXVII

Promotion For Mrs. Day

Deleah had lived for several months at Cashelthorpe as companion to Miss Forcus, when on a certain Thursday afternoon she excused herself, as it was often her habit to do, from attending on Miss Forcus, and went to pass the hour and a half of the early-closing day with her mother and sister.

Mrs. Day was alone at the moment of her arrival, and that her mother was in unusually low spirits was quite obvious to Deleah.

"Come for a walk with me, mama; it is not good for you to be shut up on such a day in this stuffy room."