‘It is metaphorically full,’ said her son from a chair.
There was laughter, which Aubrey met by kicking his feet and surveying their movement.
‘Get up and make up the fire,’ said Clement, who found these signs distasteful.
His brother appeared not to hear.
‘Get up and make up the fire.’
‘Now that is not the way to ask him, Clement,’ said Justine. ‘You will only make him obstinate. Aubrey, darling, get up and make up the fire.’
‘Yes, do it, darling,’ said Blanche.
‘Now I have been called “darling” twice, I will. Why should I be obliging to people who do not call me “darling” or “little boy” or some other name of endearment?’
There was further laughter, and Aubrey bent over the fire with his face hidden. This seemed a safe attitude, but Clement observed the flush on his neck.
‘Don’t go back to the best chair in the room.’
Aubrey strolled back to the chair; Clement intercepted him and put a leg across his path; Justine came forward with a swift rustling and a movement of her arms as of separating two combatants.
‘Come, come, this will not do: I have nothing to say for either of you. Both go back to your seats.’
‘Will one of you help me to move the chair for your mother?’ said Edgar, who did not need any aid.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Aubrey, with almost military precision.
‘Now I think that Aubrey came out of that the better, Clement,’ said Justine.
‘The other fellow doesn’t seem to be out of it yet,’ said Oliver, glancing at his second grandson. ‘I am at a loss to see why he put himself into it.’
‘Miss Sloane, what must you think of our family?’
‘I have belonged to a family myself,’
‘And do you not now belong to one?’ ‘Well, we are all scattered.’
‘I do not dare to think of the time when we shall be apart. It seems the whole of life to be here together.’
Thomas lifted his eyes at this view of a situation which he had just seen illustrated.
‘Do you belong to a family, Miss Griffin?’ said Dudley.
‘I did, of course, but we have been scattered for a long time.’
‘I have lived in the same house all my life, and so has my brother,’ said Edgar.
‘I have lived in two houses,’ said Blanche.
‘I am just in my second,’ said Matty, ‘and very strange I am finding it, or should be if it were not for this dear family at my gates. The family at whose gates I am, I should say.’
‘Why should you say it, Aunt Matty?’ said Justine. ‘What difference does it make?’
‘I too have just entered my second,’ said Oliver, ‘though it hardly seemed worth while for me to do so. I had better have laid myself down on the way.’
‘And you, Miss Sloane?’ said Edgar.
‘I am on my way to my second, which must be a very tiny one. It will be the first I have had to myself.’
‘And you have not had your road made easier,’ said Oliver. ‘You have been dragged out of it in the dead of night, when you thought that one of your days was done. The way you suffer it speaks well for you.’
‘I have an idea that a good many things do that for Miss Sloane,’ said Justine. ‘But you make me feel rather a culprit, Grandpa.’
‘You have done a sorry thing, child, and I propose to undo it. Good night, Blanche, my dear, and good-bye I hope until tomorrow. If it is to be for ever, I am the more glad to have been with you again.’
‘Father is tired,’ said Blanche, who would never admit that Oliver at eighty-seven might be near the end of his days.
‘I am tired too,’ said Matty, ‘but after such a happy evening with such a satisfying end, I thank you all so much, and I am sure you thank me.’
‘We do indeed,’ said Justine. ‘You are tired too, Miss Griffin, and I am afraid after a very brief taste of happiness. But we will make up for it another time.’
‘Oh, I am not tired,’ said Miss Griffin, standing up and looking at Matty.
‘Be careful, both of you, on this slippery floor,’ said Blanche. ‘I always think that Jellamy puts too much polish on it. Do not hurry.’
‘We shall neither of us be able to do that again,’ said Oliver.
Blanche followed her father and sister with her eyes on their steps, and perhaps gave too little attention to her own, for she slipped herself and had to be saved. Justine moved impulsively to Maria.
‘Miss Sloane, I do hope that you are going to spend some time with them? It comes to me somehow that you are just what they need. Can you give me a word of assurance?’
‘I hope they will let me stay for a while. It is what I need anyhow, a home and old friends at this time of my life.’
‘And there are new friends here for you. I do trust that you realize that.’
‘I have been made to feel it. And they do not seem to me quite new, as they are relations of such old ones.’
‘Dear Aunt Matty, she does attach people to her in her own way.’
‘We have enjoyed it so much, Mrs Gaveston. We shall have a great deal to think and talk of,’ said Sarah, able to express her own view of the occasion.
‘We need not thank you,’ said Thomas, uttering the words with a sincere note and acting upon them.
‘You did not mind the inclusion of Aubrey?’ said Justine. ‘It is so difficult to keep one member of the family apart, and we know Mr Middleton is used to boys.’
‘Can that give him only one view of them?’ said Mark.
‘Oh, come, he would not have given his best years to them if they had not meant something to him. I daresay he often finds his thoughts harking back to the old days.’
‘His best years!’ said Sarah, laughing at youth’s view of a man in his prime.
‘Mr Middleton, what do you think of the little boy?’ said Justine in a lowered tone. ‘Don’t look at him; he is enough in the general eye; but would you in the light of your long experience put him above or below the level?’
Thomas was hampered in his answer by being forbidden to look at the subject of it, a thing he had hardly done.
‘He seems to strike his own note in his talk,’ he said in a serious tone, trying to recall what he had heard.
‘Yes, that is what I think,’ said Justine, as if the words had considerable import, ‘I am privately quite with you. But quiet; keep it in the dark; tell it not in Gath. Little pitchers have long ears. You see I feel quite maternally towards my youngest brother.’
Thomas was able to give a smile of agreement, and he added one of understanding.
‘Do you think that we are alike as a family, Miss Sloane?’ said Blanche, willing for comment upon her children.
‘Really, Mother, poor Miss Sloane! We have surely had enough from her tonight.’
Maria regarded the faces round her, causing Aubrey to drop his eyes with a smile as of some private reminiscence.
‘I think I see a likeness between your brother-in-law and your youngest son.’
‘A triumph, Miss Sloane!’ said Justine. ‘That is a great test, and you are through it at a step. Now you can turn to the rest of us with confidence.’
‘But perhaps with other feelings,’ said Mark. ‘Miss Sloane will think that we have one resemblance, an undue interest in ourselves.’
‘In each other, let us say. She will not mind that.’
‘I think there are several other family likenesses,’ said Maria.
‘And they are obvious, Miss Sloane. Quite unworthy of a discerning eye. You have had the one great success and you will rest on that. Well, I think that there is nothing more fascinating than pouncing on the affinities in a family and tracing them to their source. I do not pity anyone for being asked to do it, because I like so much to do it myself.’
‘Must it be a safe method of judging?’ said Clement.