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When later she was told that her sister had become engaged to Sir Nigel Anstruthers, a flame of colour flashed over her face, she stared silently a moment, then bit her lip and burst into tears. "Well, Bett," exclaimed Rosalie, "you are the queerest thing I ever saw." Bettina's tears were an outburst, not a flow. She swept them away passionately with her small handkerchief.
Lulu moved forward, and stood a little away from them, and sang, too. She was still holding Ninian's picture. Dwight did not sing. He lifted his shoulders and his eyebrows and watched Lulu. When they had finished, "Lulu the mocking bird!" Dwight cried. He said "ba-ird." "Fine!" cried Cornish. "Why, Miss Lulu, you have a good voice!" "Miss Lulu Bett, the mocking ba-ird!" Dwight insisted.
Pring up der preakfast; I shall make der bett, and gif you die attresses! You are right; it vould pe too much for me."
Bett, who was lacing her shoes, now said casually: "No need to wait till then. Her and Bobby were out in the side yard sitting in the hammock till all hours." Di had no answer save her furious flush, and Mrs. Bett went on: "Didn't I tell you? I knew it before the company left, but I didn't say a word. Thinks I, 'She's wiggles and chitters. So I left her stay where she was." "But, mother!"
But, on groping his way through the room, his staff, which he used as a pioneer to go before, and warn him of danger, seemed to be impeded in its progress, and a low, gurgling, choking sound proceeded from the object before him, giving him the first intimation of the truth as it was, that Mau-mau Bett, his bosom companion, the only remaining member of his large family, had fallen in a fit of the palsy, and lay helpless and senseless on the earth!
He repeated the word morgen, and we insisted on zimmer and bett. 'He takes us for twin Caspar Hausers, sighed Temple. 'Nein, said the man, and, perhaps enlightened by hearing a foreign tongue, beckoned for us to step at his heels. His lodging was a woodman's hut.
That is not a pleasant position for me to find myself in. It is distinctly unpleasant, I may say. But you see for yourself." Lulu went on, into the passage. "Wasn't she married when she thought she was?" Mrs. Bett cried shrilly. "Mamma," said Ina. "Do, please, remember Monona. Yes Dwight thinks she's married all right now and that it's all right, all the time."
Really, the davenport looked like Ina, for its chintz pattern seemed to bear a design of lifted eyebrows and arch, reproachful eyes. Lulu dusted the upright piano, and that was like Dwight in a perpetual attitude of rearing back, with paws out, playful, but capable, too, of roaring a ready bass. And the black fireplace there was Mrs. Bett to the life.
It is so with Lulu Bett, dim drudge in the house of her silly sister and of her sister's pompous husband: a breath of life catches at her and she follows it on a pitiful adventure which is all she has enough vitality to achieve but which is nevertheless real and vivid in a waste of dulness. Here was an occasion to arraign Warbleton as Mr.
"Lulie," she said, "was his other wife was she there?" "No, no, mother. She wasn't there." Mrs. Bett's lips moved, repeating the words. "Then that ain't so bad," she said. "I was afraid maybe she turned you out." "No," Lulu said, "it wasn't that bad, mother." Mrs. Bett brightened. In little matters, she quarrelled and resented, but the large issues left her blank.
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