Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/228



OUNDS, Mrs. Duggan's maid, had been with her mistress for three years. A little, dried-up slip of a woman with a tight mouth buttoned up under a Roman nose, she knew her mistress almost as well as she knew Mrs. Duggan's wardrobe. Pounds dressed her ladyship's moods much as she clothed her body, with matronly black velvet, or tissue of gold and of old rose, and when flesh-coloured stockings were in fashion Pounds supplied them and suffered my lady's ankles to assume the responsibility.

On a June morning, with the sun shining, Pounds carried in Mrs. Duggan's early tea. She had come to know her mistress's various voices, and being a facile cynic she reacted to them. She knew the winter voice and the spring voice, the "I'm an old woman" plaint, and the plump autumnal cry of the comfortable egoist. There was the Monte Carlo voice, and the Albert Hall voice, and the voice of "Aunt Dora." Pounds was an echo in Mrs. Duggan's world, but in her own world Pounds rent calico and smashed crockery.

"Two lumps of sugar this morning, Pounds."

"Yes, madam."

Pounds popped in the two lumps. She made the appropriate remark—"It's a beautiful day, madam," for the voice from the bed expressed Ascot and a successful frock and strawberries and cream and a punt on the river and a good appetite and youth and the desire to fool somebody.

"Tell Randal I shall want the car at eleven."

"Yes, madam."

"Mr. Sorrell may be here for lunch. And Miss Merrindin. Tell cook that. And we shall be dining at my club."

"Yes, madam."

Pounds was wondering whether the colour of the day