Beatrice Grimshaw

“ What would not that two thousand annuity have meant to Andy and herself, had only the despised Mrs. Jane still been with them! Things were not prospering with Andy. The grocery had suffered from coöperative store competition, undreamed-of when Andy made his big venture; money was short, and likely to be shorter. The Meakins no longer lived sumptuously in Metropole Mansions; they had an upper back room in a not too high-class boarding-house, and Vera wore no more lancer plumes.... Two thousand a year! Why, old Mrs. Meakin might easily have lived ten years—twenty thousand! ”

“ About the same time, one Andrew Meakin took a ticket by the Burns Philip boat Meandra from Sydney up to Papua. He had not previously realized that such a place as Papua actually existed, though if he had searched the memories of long-dead school-days, he might have found an indefinite statement or two about “Papua, or New Guinea, the largest island in the world; produces birds of paradise, cocoanuts, and gold; is largely unexplored.”... In Andrew Meakin's philosophy, things you learned in school had nothing to do with things you encountered afterwards in the world. ”

“ Vera was dressed for Sunday morning; one need not ruin a new silk crêpe because a man is an uncomprehending brute. She stopped.
“Your mother's run away,” she said, gasping and choking effectively. “Ungrateful old thing! everyone will be laughing at us. She left a note on the pin-cushion. There it is, and I can tell you what I think about the old——”
Andy came towards her with a light in his eye that frightened her.
“I didn't mean anything,” she cried.
“You'd better not say anything, then,” said Jane Meakin's son. “You never were kind to my mother.”
“You were as bad,” said Vera defensively. ”

“ What could be more refined than doing no work of any kind, having champagne for dinner as much as once a week, and wearing real lancer plumes every time you put your head out of doors?... Life was a good thing to Vera Meakin, since the successful grocer had taken her from her table in a city restaurant. She was not “bothered” with children; Andy was away all day ”

“ Young tram conductors, with smart figures and cultivated moustaches, charioted these loads of youth seaward; young nurses, laden up to the Plimsoll mark with cargoes of white-frilled baby to be ferried over to the park, gazed enviously at the procession of pleasure. ”

“ Vera and Andy both received her coldly; she did not know which was the more offensive, that, or Andy's solicitude lest she should have got her feet wet (a little rain had sprung up on the way home) . She went to bed early, and lay long awake, hugging her secret, and following headless and tailless fancies in her own brain. Never was an anxious lass with a puzzling lover more eager to know if he “meant something” than was Mrs, Meakin to know the exact meaning of Mrs. ”

“ Seventy-one, and not a day more, is me age.”
“Seventy or ninety or a hundred, it's all one; when you're old, you're old, and I'd sooner be dead myself,” averred Vera frankly. “I've 'ad my s'y; put down that teapot, and don't be silly. You ought to be thankful to have such a home as Andy gives you. ”

“ She reached out across the table, and seized the plated horror that had poured out discord instead of tea, this unlucky Saturday afternoon. “And the sugar-basin's mine, best electro—and the eight tayspoons, that's real silver. Gev them over to me, wuman, as soon as ye please, and faith, I'll rid ye of meself soon enough to please even you.”
“Oh, now you're talking rot,” said Vera. “You know Andy waon't let you work. And if he did, what work could you do? Sydney daon't want old people.” ”

“ An old lady in a black beaded mantle, it appeared, had come in there on the Saturday afternoon, and bought some medicine; she had a big parcel under one arm, and a silver teapot, imperfectly wrapped up, under the other. As Mrs. Meakin's teapot and spoons had vanished with herself, this was proof of identity.
... Had Andy asked what the old lady's purchase was, it might have saved him many a long tramp about railway stations. For Mrs. Meakin had bought a packet of Golden Specific for Sea-sickness. ”

“ It does me good to spite that wee cat, Vera, and as for me son, Mrs. Bell—when childer begins to get ould, an' has their own husbands and wives, and doesn't back out their mothers as they had a right to do, ye don't have the same heart to them. ”

“ Well, I daon't expect it; but I do expect, when a married laidy is generous enough to tyke in and keep 'er husband's useless old relytions, that they shall at least refryne from myking a nuisance of themselves, and stye in their plyce. And it isn't your plyce to pour out tea for my guests, and it's not your nyme that you're using—myking confusion with my parcels and letters! You're not Mrs. Andrew; your Andrew's dead and buried. You're Mrs. Jyne; and you've got to remember you was only a factory girl 'oo married a weaver, while I'm a laidy with a husbind 'oo's a successful merchant. ”