Read Online Mrs. Ames by E. F. Benson - Free Book Online Page A

home all those arts of pleasing with which she was so lavish in other people’s houses. Also, this morning she felt rather cross, a thing which, to do her justice, was rare with her.
    â€˜Not very,’ she said. ‘I kept waking. It was stiflingly hot.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, my dear,’ said he.
    Mrs Evans busied herself with tea-making; her long, slender hands moved with extraordinary deftness and silence among clattering things, and her husband whistled the ‘Merry Widow Waltz’ once or twice more.
    â€˜Oh, Wilfred, do stop that odious tune,’ she said, without the slightest hint of impatience in her voice. ‘It is bad enough on your pianola, which, after all, is in tune!’
    â€˜Which is more than can be said for my penny whistle?’ asked he, good-humouredly. ‘Right you are, I’m dumb. Tell me about your party last night.’
    â€˜My dear, haven’t you been to enough Riseborough parties to know that there is nothing to tell about any party?’ she asked. ‘I sat between Major Ames and the son. I talked gardening on one side with the father, and something which I suppose was enlightened Cambridge conversation on the other. Harry Ames is rather a dreadful sort of youth. He took me into the garden afterwards to show me something about roses. And the carriage didn’t come. Major Ames saw me home. When did you get in?’
    â€˜Not till nearly three. Very difficult maternity case. But we’ll pull them both through.’
    Millie Evans gave a little shudder, which was not quite entirely instinctive. She emphasized it for her husband’s benefit. Unfortunately, he did not notice it.
    â€˜Will you have your tea now?’ she asked.
    He looked at her with an air mainly conjugal but tinged with professionalism.
    â€˜Bit upset with the heat, little woman?’ he asked. ‘You look a trifle off colour. We can’t have you sleeping badly, either. Show me the man who sleeps his seven hours every night, and I’ll show you who will live to be ninety.’
    This prospect did not for the moment allure his wife.
    â€˜I think I would sooner sleep less and die earlier,’ she said in her even voice, ‘though I’m sure Elsie will live to a hundred at that rate. You encourage her to be lazy in the morning, Wilfred. I’m sure anyone can manage to be in time for breakfast at a quarter past nine.’
    He shook his head.
    â€˜No, no, little woman,’ he said. ‘Let a growing girl sleep just as much as she feels inclined. I would sooner stint a girl’s food than her sleep. Give the red corpuscles a chance, eh?’
    Millie got up from the table, and went to the sideboard to get some fruit. Then suddenly it struck her that all this was hardly worthwhile. It seemed a stupid business to come down every morning and eat breakfast, to manage the household, to go for a walk, perhaps, or sit in the garden, and after completing the round of these daily futilities, to go to bed again and sleep, just for the recuperation that sleep gave, to enable her to do it all over again. But the strawberries looked cool and moist, and standing by the sideboard she ate a few of them. Just above it hung the oblong Sheraton mirror, which her husband had bought so cheaply at a local sale and had brought home so triumphantly. That, too, seemed to tell her a stale story, and the reflection of her young face, crowned with the shimmer of yellow hair, against the dark oak background of the panelling seemed without purpose or significance. She was doing nothing with her beauty that stayed so long with her. Butit would not stay many years longer: this morning even there seemed to be a shadow over it, making it dim … Soon nobody would care if she had ever been pretty or not; indeed, even now Elsie seemed by her height and the maturity of her manner to be reminding everybody of the fact that she herself must be approaching the bar which every woman