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All the rest had very simple names, John, Walter, Fanny, and Susan, but when it came to Cora Cordelia, luxuries were beginning to get very scarce in the Bilton family, and Mrs. Bilton felt that she must make up for it by being lavish, in one direction or another.
Just go and fetch them, please Mrs. Bilton. No, no, we'll talk afterwards. I'll stay here till they come." And he urged her out into the tea-room again. The guests had finished their tea long ago, but still sat on, for they were very comfortable. Obviously they were thoroughly enjoying themselves, and all were growing, as time passed, more manifestly at home.
Bilton had risen too. "Hush, children; it is not Santa Claus," she said, "it is Mr. Gilton. We are glad to see you, Mr. Gilton;" and she held out her hand to him. "Won't you sit down?" She felt that he had come in the Christmas spirit, and she was anxious to meet him half-way.
The distance to Martin's residence was not great, but it was sufficient to enable the voluble Irishman to recount a series of the most wonderful adventures and stories of foreign lands, that set Martin's heart on fire with desire to go to sea, a desire which was by no means new to him, and which recurred violently every time he paid a visit to the small sea-port of Bilton, which lay about five miles to the southward of his native village.
Bilton had odd fancies, especially toward the end that a widow was the one thing a man never could have because he wasn't there by the time he had got her. Yes, Mr. Bilton had odd fancies.
"Would you mind reading this?" said Anna-Rose faintly to Mrs. Bilton, who took the letter mechanically and held it in her hand without apparently noticing it, so much engaged was she by what she was saying. "We're going out a moment to speak to Mr. Twist," Anna-Rose then said, making for the door and beckoning to Anna-Felicitas, who still stood hesitating.
So would unassailable respectability once more descend like a white garment upon the party and cover it up. But he was nettled; nettled; nettled by the contretemps that had occurred on the very last day, when Mrs. Bilton was so nearly there; nettled and exasperated.
Bilton to her raised desk at the end of the room, and the twins to the door but the sounds passed on along the road and died away round the next corner. At half-past four the personnel of The Open Arms was sitting about silently in a state of increasing uneasiness, when Mr. Ridding walked in.
There seemed to be no end, thought the Annas as they ran hither and thither, to what a German will hold. Mrs. Bilton waylaid the heated and harried Anna-Rose as she was carrying a tray of ices to a party she felt she had been carrying ices to innumerable times already. The little curls beneath her cap clung damply to her forehead. Her face was flushed and distressed.
She would not conceal from them, she said, that even Mr. Bilton had not, especially, at first, been entirely without such movements. He had settled down, however on finding he could trust her to know better than he did what he wanted. Don't wise wives always? she inquired. And the result had been that no man ever had a more devoted wife while he was alive, or a more devoted widow after he wasn't.
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