She naturally wanted him to look all right.
Mrs. Chaffery appeared in the half light of the passage as the top of
a grimy cap over Ethel's shoulder and two black sleeves about her
neck. She emerged as a small, middle-aged woman, with a thin little
nose between silver-rimmed spectacles, a weak mouth and perplexed
eyes, a queer little dust-lined woman with the oddest resemblance to
Ethel in her face. She was trembling visibly with nervous agitation.
She hesitated, peering, and then kissed Mr. Lewisham effusively. "And
this is Mr. Lewisham!" she said as she did so.
She was the third thing feminine to kiss Lewisham since the
promiscuous days of his babyhood. "I was so afraid--There!" She
laughed hysterically.
"You'll excuse my saying that it's comforting to see you--honest like
and young. Not but what Ethel ... _He_ has been something dreadful,"
said Mrs. Chaffery. "You didn't ought to have written about that
mesmerising. And of all letters that which Jane wrote--there! But
he's waiting and listening--"
"Are we to go downstairs, Mums?" asked Ethel.
"He's waiting for you there," said Mrs. Chaffery. She held a dismal
little oil lamp, and they descended a tenebrous spiral structure into
an underground breakfast-room lit by gas that shone through a
partially frosted globe with cut-glass stars.
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