“And this is Pat? How are you, sugar-pie?” Mrs. Merridew gave Pat a hearty hug. “And Cuddles…darling!” Cuddles was likewise engulfed. Pat found her voice and asked the guest to come upstairs. Uncle Tom had spoken no word. It was Cuddles’ private opinion that his vocal cords had been paralyzed by shock.

“Can that be all one woman?” Tillytuck asked the lilac bush. “I don’t like ’em skinny…but…”

“Think av that in Swallowfield,” Judy said to Gentleman Tom. “Oh, oh, its widening his front dure as well as painting it Tom Gardiner shud have done.”

Gentleman Tom said nothing, as was his habit, but McGinty crawled under the kitchen lounge. And upstairs mother was lying back on her pillows shaking with laughter. “Poor Tom!” she said. “Oh, poor Tom!”

Mrs. Merridew talked and laughed all the way upstairs. She lifted her awful fat arms and removed her hat, showing snow-white hair lying in sleek molded waves around a face that might once have been pretty but whose red-brown eyes were lost in pockets of flesh. The red sweet mouth was red still…rather too red. Lipstick was not in vogue at Silver Bush…but the lavish gleam of gold in the teeth inside detracted from its sweetness. As for the laugh that Uncle Tom had remembered, it was merely a fat rumble…yet with something good-natured about it, too.

“Oh, honey, let’s sit outside,” exclaimed Mrs. Merridew, after she had got downstairs again. They trailed out to the garden after her. Uncle Tom, still voiceless, brought up the rear. Pat did not dare look at him. What on earth was going on in his mind? Mrs. Merridew lowered herself into a rustic chair, that creaked ominously, and beamed about her.

“I love to sit and watch the golden bees plundering the sweets of the clover,” she announced. “I adore the country. The city is so artificial. Don’t you truly think the city is so artificial, sugar-pie? There can be no real interchange of souls in the city. Here in the beautiful country, under God’s blue sky”…Mrs. Merridew raised fat be-ringed hands to it…“human beings can be their real and highest selves. I am sure you agree with me, angel.”

“Of course,” said Pat stupidly. She couldn’t think of an earthly thing to say. Not that it mattered. Mrs. Merridew could and did talk for them all. She babbled on as if she were on the lecture platform and all her audience needed to do was sit and listen. “Are you interested in psychoanalysis?” she asked Pat but waited for no answer. When Judy announced supper Pat asked Uncle Tom to stay and share it with them. But Uncle Tom managed to get out a refusal. He said he must go home and see to the chores.