Part 120 (1/2)
”I'm sorry to hear it. I wish you good morning.”
”What have I done to upset you?” asked Mavis.
”Don't pretend you don't know.”
”But I don't.”
”What! Then I'll tell you. You've married young Devitt, when there's a man worth all the women who ever lived eating his heart out for you.”
Mavis stopped, amazed at the other woman's vehemence.
”A man who you've treated like the beast you are,” continued Miss Toombs hotly. ”After all that's happened, he longed to marry you, and that's more than most men would have done.”
”You don't know--you can't understand,” faltered Mavis.
”Yes, I do. You're not really bad; you're only a precious big fool and don't know when you've got a good thing.”
”I--I love my husband.”
”Rot! You may think you do, but you don't. You're much too hot-blooded to stick that kind of marriage long. I know I wouldn't. And it serves you right if you ever make a mess of it.”
”I thought Sir Archibald only pitied me,” said Mavis, in extenuation of her marriage.
”Pity! pity! He's a man, not a bloodless nincomp.o.o.p,” said Miss Toombs.
”And it's you I have to thank for seeing him so often,” she added, as her anger again flamed up.
”Sir Archibald?” asked Mavis.
”He sees me to talk about you,” said Miss Toombs sorrowfully. ”And he never looks twice at me. He doesn't even like me enough to ask me to go away for a week-end with him. I'm simply nothing to him, and that's the truth.”
”I think you a dear, anyway. And I've got you a rise of a pound a week.”
”What?”
Mavis repeated her information.
”That'll buy me some summer muslins I've long had my eye on, and one or two bits of jewellery. Then, perhaps, he'll look at me,” declared Miss Toombs.
The next moment she caught sight of her reflection in Perrott's (the grocer's) window, at which she cried:
”Just look at me! What on earth could ever make that attractive?”
”Your kind nature,” replied Mavis. ”You're much too fond of under-valuing your appearance.”
”It's all d.a.m.ned unfair!” cried Miss Toombs pa.s.sionately. ”What use are your looks to you? What fun do you get out of life? Why--oh why haven't I your face and figure?”
”What would you do with it?” asked Mavis.
”Get him, get him somehow. If he wouldn't marry me I'd manage to 'live.' And he's not a cad like Charlie Perigal,” cried Miss Toombs, as she hurried off to work.