Mrs. Ames Read Online Free PDF

‘Street’, and not a ‘Road’, it had a garden which anybody would expect to belong to a ‘Road’, if not a ‘Place’. Streets seemed to imply small backyards looking into the backs ofother houses, whereas Dr Evans’ house did not, at its back, look on other houses at all, but extended a full hundred yards, and then looked over the railway cutting of the South-Eastern line, on open fields. Should you feel unkindly disposed, it was easy to ask whether the noise of passing trains was not very disagreeable, and indeed, Mrs Taverner, in a moment of peevishness arising from the fact that what she thought was champagne cup was only hock cup, had asked that very question of Millicent Evans this afternoon in Mrs Ames’ hearing. But Millicent, in her most confiding and childlike manner, had given what Mrs Ames considered to be a wholly admirable and suitable answer. ‘Indeed we do,’ she had said, ‘and we often envy you your beautiful big lawn.’ For everybody, of course, knew that Mrs Taverner’s beautiful big lawn was a small piece of black earth diversified by plantains, and overlooked and made odorous by the new gasworks. Mrs Taverner had, as was not unnatural, coloured up on receipt of this silken speech, until she looked nearly as red as Mrs Altham. For herself, Mrs Ames would not, even under this provocation, have made so ill-natured a reply, though she was rather glad that Millicent had done so, and to account for her involuntary smile, she instantly asked Mrs Altham to lunch with her the next day. Indeed, walking now down the High Street, she smiled again at the thought, and Mr Pritchard, standing outside his grocery store, thought she smiled at him, and raised his hat. And Mrs Ames rather hoped he saw how different a sort of smile she kept on tap, so to speak, for grocers.
    Mrs Ames knew very well the manner of speeches that Mrs Altham had been indulging in during the last three weeks, about the little dinner-party she was giving this evening, for she had been indiscreet enough to givespecimens of them to Millicent Evans, who had promptly repeated them to her, and it is impossible adequately to convey how unimportant she thought was anything that Mrs Altham said. But the fact that she had said so much was indirectly connected with her asking Mrs Altham (‘and your husband, of course,’ as she had rather pointedly added) to lunch tomorrow, for she knew that Mrs Altham would be bursting with curiosity about the success of the new experiment, and she intended to let her burst. She disliked Mrs Altham, but that lady’s hostility to herself only amused her. Of course, Mrs Altham could not refuse to accept her invitation, because it was a point of honour in Riseborough that anyone bidden to lunch the day after a dinner party must, even at moderate inconvenience, accept, for otherwise what was to happen to the remains of salmon and of jelly too debilitated to be served in its original shape, even though untouched, but still excellent if eaten out of jelly glasses? So much malice, then, must be attributed to Mrs Ames, that she wished to observe the febrile symptoms of Mrs Altham’s curiosity, and not to calm them, but rather excite them further.
    Mrs Ames would not naturally have gone for social purposes to the house of her doctor, had he not married Millicent, whose father was her own first cousin, and would have been baronet himself had he been the eldest instead of the youngest child. As it was, Dr Evans was on a wholly different footing from that of an ordinary physician, for by marriage he, as she by birth, was connected with ‘County’, which naturally was the crown and cream of Riseborough society. Mrs Ames was well aware that the profession of a doctor was a noble and self-sacrificing one, but lines had to be drawn somewhere, and it was impossible to contemplate visiting Dr Holmes. A dentist’s professionwas self- sacrificing, too, but