The Way Home by Henry Handel Richardson — Read

These rather waspish comments--Lizzie never seemed able to resist having a thrust at Gracey--were made in the drawing-room at "Ultima Thule," where the two wives sat waiting for their husbands to rejoin them. John and Lizzie were dining there at John's express request: the groom had ridden over after lunch with a line from John, asking if he and Lizzie might take pot-luck with them that evening. Richard said: "Wonders will never cease," and a refusal was not to be thought of; but Cook had been very put out by the shortness of the notice; so much so that Mary had driven to town to fetch delicacies; thinking as she went, how in the old days SHE would have run up a dinner for four, and one well worth eating, too, in less than an hour. Her hands did sometimes itch to show such a fair-weather worker as Cook what could be done.

By now the evening was more than half gone, and still the gentlemen lingered; though Lizzie had sung all Richard's favourite songs and pieces, some of them more than once. To pass the time, she had also sung to Cuffy; for--as had happened ere this when she was dining there --Nannan had knocked to say Master Cuffy could not be got to sleep, for thinking his Auntie might sing to him. Cuffy as audience was better than none, so Lizzie begged for the child to be brought in; and thereupon Cuffy appeared on Nannan's arm in his little red flannel nightgown, his feet swathed in a crib--blanket, his eyes alight with expectation. Seated on his mother's knee he drank in: "There was a Friar of Orders Grey," and the sad ditty of "Barbara Allan," himself rendering "Sun of my Soul" before, soundly kissed and cosseted by his aunt, who had a great liking for the little man, he was carried back to bed.