On a Saturday in the early days of the following year, 1892, Edwin by
special request had gone in to take afternoon tea with the Orgreaves.
Osmond Orgreave was just convalescent after an attack of influenza, and
in the opinion of Janet wanted cheering up. The task of enlivening him
had been laid upon Edwin. The guest, and Janet and her father and
mother sat together in a group round the fire in the drawing-room.
The drawing-room alone had grown younger with years. Money had been
spent on it rather freely. During the previous decade Osmond's family,
scattering, had become very much less costly to him, but his habits of
industry had not changed, nor his faculty for collecting money. Hence
the needs of the drawing-room, which had been pressing for quite twenty
years, had at last been satisfied; indeed Osmond was saving, through
mere lack of that energetic interest in things which is necessary to
spending. Possibly even the drawing-room would have remained
untouched--both Janet and her elder sister Marian sentimentally
preferred it as it was--had not Mrs Orgreave been `positively ashamed'
of it when her married children, including Marian, came to see her.
They were all married now, except Janet and Charlie and Johnnie; and
Alicia at any rate had a finer drawing-room than her mother. So far as
the parents were concerned Charlie might as well have been married, for
he had acquired a partnership in a practice at Ealing and seldom visited
home. Johnnie, too, might as well have been married. Since Jimmie's
wedding he had used the house strictly as a hotel, for sleeping and
eating, and not always for sleeping. He could not be retained at home.
His interests were mysterious, and lay outside it. Janet alone was
faithful to the changed drawing-room, with its new carpets and
wall-papers and upholstery.
"I've got more grandchildren than children now," said Mrs Orgreave to
Edwin, "and I never thought to have!"
"Have you really?" Edwin responded. "Let me see--"
"I've got nine."
"Ten, mother," Janet corrected. "She's forgetting her own grandchildren
now!"
"Bless me!" exclaimed Mrs Orgreave, taking off her eyeglasses and
wiping them, "I'd missed Tom's youngest."
"You'd better not tell Emily that," said Janet. (Emily was the mother
of Tom's children.) "Here, give me those eyeglasses, dear. You'll never
get them right with a linen handkerchief. Where's your bit of chamois?"
Mrs Orgreave absently and in somewhat stiff silence handed over the
pince-nez! She was now quite an old woman, small, shapeless, and
delightfully easy-going, whose sense of humour had not developed with
age. She could never see a joke which turned upon her relations with
her grandchildren, and in fact the jocular members of the family had
almost ceased to employ this subject of humour. She was undoubtedly
rather foolish about her grandchildren--`fond,' as they say down there.
The parents of the grandchildren did not object to this foolishness--
that is, they only pretended to object. The task of preventing a
pardonable weakness from degenerating into a tedious and mischievous
mania fell solely upon Janet. Janet was ready to admit that the health
of the grandchildren was a matter which could fairly be left to their
fathers and mothers, and she stood passive when Mrs Orgreave's
grandmotherly indulgences seemed inimical to their health; but Mrs
Orgreave was apt to endanger her own health in her devotion to the
profession of grandmother--for example by sitting up to unchristian
hours with a needle. Then there would be a struggle of wills, in which
of course Mrs Orgreave, being the weaker, was defeated; though her
belief survived that she and she alone, by watchfulness, advice,
sagacity, and energy, kept her children's children out of the grave. On
all other questions the harmony between Janet and her mother was
complete, and Mrs Orgreave undoubtedly considered that no mother had
ever had a daughter who combined so many virtues and charms.
------------------------------------------------------------------------