E. Nesbit

“ Next day there was a little talk about the family jewels. It ended in old Lady Glastonbury's sending them to Lavender with a sugared note.
“Old Susie don't hardly look her own bright little self without the diamonds, does she?” one of her footmen murmured to another. “The Pig-sticker's girl wouldn't have wanted them—plastered all over with them already. Poor old Susie! We'll see how the young 'un looks in them.” ”

“ Hitherto, her every moment had been at his service, and at the service of that new life which was to him the only natural life for intelligent human beings. Now, very quietly, and very persistently, Lavender began to withdraw, to evade invitations, to stay at home with “headaches,” to make her calls very short and her visits to her dressmaker very long. More than once she was away for a whole day, without either carriage or motor—“very plainly dressed, milady,” her maid reported to old Susie, who flushed with triumph under her rouge and gave the maid a five-pound note for good news. ”

“ Lady Glastonbury affirmed; “nothing's any good. The only comfort I have is that that sort of people never have any morals. So it may be possible to get rid of her. If only it could be done while dear Gertrude's still heart-broken.”
“You think she would?” the friend asked.
“Like a shot,” said the mother-in-law, “if he could get free soon enough. Claude's got the family looks, you know.”
“He's exactly like you,” said the friend. “Claude is his mother's glass, and she in him brings back the lovely April of her prime.” ”

“ Shall we go into the sitting-room? Shall I show you the way?”
She opened the door through which that degrading crouching figure in shirt-sleeves had passed, and the other woman followed her. There was nothing else to do. The sitting room, like the kitchen, was of a shining neatness. All the furniture was old and bees-waxed to a mirror surface. An oak settle, a Welsh dresser, displaying a Spode tea service of pink and gold, ladder-backed chairs, a spiral-legged gate-table. ”

“ And now will you please go.”
“Upon my word,” said old Lady Glastonbury, and she leaned on the table for support, “—you expect me to believe this—this silly tale?”
Lavender shrugged her shoulders delicately.
“No, no, my girl,”—old Susie's face was purple under its casing,—“young women don't set up secret flats just to do their own housework in and entertain French shopkeeper's wives.”
“I did,” said Lavender.
“It takes two birds to build a nest.” The flowers in old Susie's hat trembled sympathetically as her hand trembled on the table. ”

“ Her taxi set her down in Siena Street a little way from those flats. The street was dusty and dirty; men in shirt sleeves and women without hats were standing about in groups. A barrow loaded with flowers went by, and there were flowers in some of the windows of the flats.
She went in and up the stairs. There was no hall porter in the dingy cemented passage. And no lift boy and no lift. Old Susie had to climb the stairs, for Mrs. Lovell's flat was on the top floor. Many, many stairs. She reached the top landing breathless. ”

“ Fortunately the thing didn't get into the papers, but everybody who was anybody knew and chattered till Lord Glastonbury and his young wife went to live at one of his country houses, where they raise cattle and have a model dairy. There are the strangest stories about the domesticity of their life there, but nothing that is positively scandalous. When people told each other the story they always added: “So that's the second Glastonbury scandal in the last forty years.”
“What was the other?” some one would be sure to ask, and the answer would be:
“Oh, have you forgotten? About old Susie. ”

“ I expect they think... Anyway they do hang about. But so they do with barmaids. Claude doesn't seem to mind. I spoke to him about it the other day. 'She's too cordial,' I said. 'There'll be a scandal presently.' Well, he can't say I haven't warned him.”
“But if she's cordial to everyone?”
“That's just her craftiness,” said old Susie. “You mark my words, Amelia, shall find her out yet. She's growing paler and thinner. She's got something on her mind. Oh, I don't despair of seeing him free yet.”
“But surely,”—even Amelia had to say it—“you don't want the girl to do anything wrong?” ”

“ He found his mother in that confusion of silks and stuffs and woods and metals, carpets and cabinets, statuettes and flowers, which she called her drawing room. Valuable and beautiful objects in an aimless, elaborate muddle. ”