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Updated: June 3, 2025
I ought to have asked. But I'm getting an old woman." "We were just arguing whether you were thirty-eight or thirty-nine, auntie," said Edwin. "What a tease he is with his beard!" she archly retorted. "Well, your old aunt is sixty this day." "Sixty!" the nephew and niece repeated together in astonishment. Auntie Hamps nodded.
Within three minutes, by three different remarks whose occult message no stranger could have understood but which forced itself with unpleasant clearness upon Edwin, Mrs Hamps had conveyed, "Janet Orgreave only cultivates Maggie because Maggie is the sister of Edwin Clayhanger."
Mrs Hamps was the widowed younger sister of their mother, and she had taken a certain share in the supervision of Darius Clayhanger's domestic affairs after the death of Mrs Clayhanger. This latter fact might account, partially but not wholly, for the intense and steady dislike in which she was held by Maggie, Clara, and Mrs Nixon.
Since his refusal to abet the project of a loan to Albert, Clara had been secretly hostile under her superficial sisterliness, and Auntie Hamps had often assured him, in a manner extraordinarily exasperating, that she was convinced he had acted conscientiously for the best. Strange thought, that after eight hours of these people and of his father, he would be still alive!
"I wonder she doesn't get married herself," said Edwin idly, having nothing in particular to remark. "You're a nice one to say such a thing!" Mrs Hamps exclaimed. "Why?" "Well, you really are!" She raised the structure of her bonnet and curls, and shook it slowly at him. And her gaze had an extraordinary quality of fleshly naughtiness that half pleased and half annoyed him. "Why?" he repeated.
"You're all very devoted to that child," she said, meaning, "There is something mysterious in that quarter which sooner or later is bound to come out." And the meaning was so clear that Edwin was intimidated. What did she guess? Did she know anything? To-night Auntie Hamps was displaying her gift at its highest. "I don't know that Maggie's so desperately keen on the infant!" he said.
Edwin, conscious of the glory of a gold watch and chain, and conscious also of freedom from future personal service on his father, preceded Auntie Hamps and Clara to the landing, and Nurse herself sped them from the room, in her quality of mistress of the room. And when she and Maggie and Darius were alone together she went to the bedside and spoke softly to her patient.
Then she talked of jams, and mentioned gooseberry-jam, whereupon Clara privately put her tongue out, with the quickness of a snake, to signal to Maggie. "Ours isn't good this year," said Maggie. "I told auntie we weren't so set up with it, a fortnight ago," said Clara simply, like a little angel. "Did you, dear?" Mrs Hamps exclaimed, with great surprise, almost with shocked surprise.
Maggie will have to look at it every day, or it'll be used for anything and everything. You tell her what her auntie says... I was thinking if but your mother could have seen it all!" Father and son said nothing. Auntie Hamps sighed. She was the only person who ever referred to the late Mrs Clayhanger.
Clara blushed and became mute. Auntie Hamps adopted a tone of excessive deference, of which the refrain was "Nurse will know best." Nurse seemed disinclined to be professional. Explaining that as she was not able to sleep she thought she might as well get up, she took a seat near the fire and addressed herself to Maggie. She was a tall and radiant woman of about thirty.
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