“You had better come when Bee and Conny meet me. Let me see—will the retreat be over by that time? Are you going to it? You are an associate of St. Faith.”
“Yes, but I don’t see how I could go to the retreat. Oh, what a relief it would be to have such a week!”
“Exactly what I feel,” said Lady Susan, somewhat to her surprise. “It strengthens and sets me right for the year. Dr. Easterby conducts this one. Do you not know him? Is not Rood House near Backsworth?”
“Yes on the other side, but he is utterly out of my reach. Julius Charnock looks up to him so much; but his name—even more than St. Faith’s—would horrify my father.”
“You could not go direct there,” said Lady Susan; “but when once you are with me you are my charge, and I could take you.”
She considered a little. Both she and her friend knew that all her religious habits were alien to Sir Harry, and that what he had freely permitted, sometimes shared at Rockpier, was now only winked at, and that if he had guessed the full extent of her observances he would have stormily issued a prohibition. Could it be wrong to spend part of her visit to Lady Susan with her hostess in a sisterhood, when she had no doubt as to attending services which he absolutely never dreamt of, and therefore did not forbid? The sacred atmosphere and holy meditations, without external strife and constant watchfulness, seemed to the poor girl like water to the thirsty; and she thought, after all the harass and whirl of the bazaar and race week, she might thus recruit her much-needed strength for the decisive conflicts her majority would bring.
Lady Susan had no doubts. The ‘grand old wreck’ was in his present aspect a hoary old persecutor, and charming Lady Tyrrell a worldly, scheming elder sister. It was as much an act of charity to give their victim an opportunity of devotion and support as if she had been the child of abandoned parents in a back court in East London. Reserve to prevent a prohibition was not in such cases treachery or disobedience; and she felt herself doing a mother’s part, as she told her daughters, with some enjoyment of the mystery. Eleonora made no promise, hoping to clear her mind by consideration, or to get Julius’s opinion. He and his wife dined at Sirenwood, and found Joe Reynolds’s drawings laid out for inspection, while Lady Susan was advising that, instead of selling them, there should be an industrial exhibition of all curiosities of art and nature to be collected in the neighbourhood, and promising her own set of foreign photographs and coloured costumes, which had served such purposes many and many a time.
After dinner the good dame tried to talk to Rosamond on what she deemed the most congenial subjects; but my Lady Rose had no notion of ‘shop’ at a dinner-party, so she made languid answer that she ‘left all that to the curates,’ and escaped to a frivolous young matron on the other side of the room, looking on while her husband was penned in and examined on his services, and his choir, and his system, and his decorations, and his classes, and his schools, for all or any of which Lady Susan pressed on him the aid of the two daughters she was leaving at Sirenwood; and on his hint that this was beyond his parish, she repeated her strong disapproval of the Vicar of Wil’sbro’, whom she had met at dinner the night before, and besides, the school there had numerous Sunday teachers.
Julius assented, for he had no redundance of the article, and his senior curate had just started on a vacation ramble with a brother; but a sort of misgiving crossed him as he heard Herbert Bowater’s last comic song pealing out, and beheld the pleasingly plain face of a Miss Strangeways on either side of him. Had he not fought the Eton and Harrow match over again with one of them at dinner? and had not a lawn tennis challenge already passed?
For Lady Tyrrell and Mrs. Charnock Poynsett were to have garden-parties on alternate Wednesdays, and the whole neighbourhood soon followed suit.
“You’ll find nobody at home, Jenny,” said Julius, coming out of a cottage opposite, as she rode up to Mrs. Hornblower’s, on one of the last days of August. “Nobody—that is, but my mother. Can you come up and see her?”
“With all my heart; but I must get down here; I’m sent for one of Herbert’s shirts. The good boy lets mamma and aunty manage them still! I believe their hearts would break outright if he took to shop ones, like the rest of them. Hush, Tartar, for shame! don’t you know me? Where’s your master?”
“At a garden-party at Duddingstone. Your mother is better, I see.”
“Yes, thank you—out driving with papa. Good Rollo!” as the dignified animal rose from the hearthrug to greet her, waving his handsome tail, and calmly expelled a large tabby cat from the easy-chair, to make room for his friends. “Well done, old Roll! Fancy a cat in such company.”
“Herbert’s dogs partake his good-nature.”
“Mungo seems to be absent too.”
“Gone with him no doubt. He is the great favourite with one of the Miss Strangeways.”
“Which—Herbert or Mungo?”
“Both! I might say, I know the young ladies best by one being rapturous about Tartar and the other about Mungo. Rollo treats both with equally sublime and indifferent politeness, rather as Raymond does.”
“What sort of girls are they? Herbert calls them ‘awfully jolly.’”
“I’m sorry to say I never can think of any other epithet for them. For once it is really descriptive.”
“Is it either of them in particular?”
“Confess, Joan, that’s what brought you over.”
“Perhaps so. Edith heard some nonsense at Backsworth, and mamma could not rest till she had sent me over to see about it; but would there be any great harm in it if it were true? Is not Lady Susan a super-excellent woman?”
“You’ve hit it again, Jenny. Couple the two descriptions.”
“I gather that you don’t think the danger great.”
“Not at present. The fascination is dual, and is at least a counteraction to the great enchantress.”
“That is well! It was not wholesome!”
“Whereas, these two are hearty, honest, well-principled girls, quite genuine.”
“Yet you don’t say it with all your heart.”
“I own I should like to find something they had left undone.”
“What, to reduce them to human nature’s daily food?”
“Daily indeed! There’s just no escaping them. There they are at matins and evensong.”
“How shocking! What, gossip afterwards?”
“Ask Rollo whether Mungo and Tartar don’t stand at the lych-gate, and if he finds it easy to put an end to the game at play.”
“Oh! and he said they never missed a Sunday service, or the school. Do they distract him?”
“Whom would it not distract to see two figures walking in with hunches on their backs like camels, and high-heeled shoes, and hats on the back of their heads, and chains and things clattering all over them?”
“Aren’t they lady-like?”
“Oh! they are quite that. Rose says it is all the pink of fashion—only coming it strong—I declare they are infectious!”
“I believe so. I never heard so many nibbles at slang from any of you five, as from the Rector of Compton in the last five minutes. I gather that he is slightly bothered.”
“There’s so much of it. We are forced to have them to all the meals on Sunday, and their lectures on functions have nearly scared poor Anne to the Pilgrim level again. They have set upon me to get up a choir-concert and a harvest-feast; but happily no one has time for the first at this season, and as to the other, I doubted whether to make this first start after such a rainy summer, and they decide me against it. To have them decorating the church!”
“Awfully jolly,” suggested Jenny.
“Even so. They are, if you understand me, technically reverent; they have startled the whole place with their curtsies and crossings in church; but they gabble up to the very porch; and the familiarity with which they discuss High Mass, as they are pleased to call it! I was obliged to silence them, and I must say they took it nicely.”
“How do they suit Lena?”
“She likes them. Lady Susan was a great help to her in London, and she feels the comfort of their honesty. They brought her to church with them one or two mornings, but it knocked her up to walk so early. Insensibly, I think they do Lady Tyrrell’s work in shutting her up from any of us.”
“Spite of croquet, which seems perpetual.”
“Chronic and sporadic parties make it so. There are few days without that or something else. Cricket or the band at the barracks.”
“People say the neighbourhood has never been so gay since Camilla Vivian’s marriage. I sometimes wonder whether anything can be going to happen,” said Jenny with a sigh, not guessing at what Julius was thinking of; then changing her tone: “Surely Herbert does not go to it all, and leave you alone? O, Julius! you should not let him.”
“Never mind, Jenny, there’s no more work now in the holidays than I am sufficient for; and for him, it is quite as guileless play as ever he had twenty years ago. It will soon be over, or I should take it more seriously.”
“But it is at such a time!”
“Yes, that is the worst of it. I have thought it over; but while he is in this mood, the making him feel victimized and interfered with has a worse effect than the letting him have his swing.”
“What is he doing now, I wonder? Here’s his sermon-paper on the table, and a Greek Testament, and Hints on Decorating Churches, with ‘Constance Strangeways’ on the first leaf—no other book. How long will this saturnalia last?”
“Up to the Ordination, I fear. You know the good people have contrived to put bazaar, races, and ball, all into the Ember Week, and they are the great object of the young ladies’ visit. Could you have him home for a quiet week first?”
“It would not be a quiet week; Edith is in the way of most of these affairs; besides, to open fire about these young ladies might just be putting nonsense into an innocent head. Now, I’ve not seen your Rectory!”
The said Rectory was in a decided state of fresh, not to say raw, novelty outside, though the old trees and garden a little softened its hard grays and strong reds; but it promised to look well when crumbling and weather-stain had done their work. At the door they met the pretty young nurse, with a delicate sea-green embroidered cashmere bundle in her arms.
“Little Lady Green Mantle,” exclaimed Jenny.
“Erin-go-bragh,” said Julius. “Rose clung to her colours in spite of all predictions about ‘the good people.’ Asleep of course,” as Jenny took her and uncovered her face. “She won’t exhibit her eyes, but they are quite proper coloured.”
“Yes, I see she is like Raymond!”
“Do you? They all say she is a perfect Charnock, though how they know I can’t guess. There,” after a little more baby-worship, “you may take her Emma.”
“Is that the under-nurse?” asked Jenny, rather surprised by her juvenility.
“The sole one. My mother and Susan are rather concerned, but Rose asserts that experience in that department is always associated with gin; and she fell in love with this girl—a daughter of John Gadley’s, who is much more respectable than he of the ‘Three Pigeons.’ I suppose it is not in the nature of things for two women to have the same view of nursery matters, unless one have brought up the other.”
“Or even if she have. Witness mamma’s sighs over Mary’s nurses.”
“I thought it was the common lot. You’ve not seen the dining-room.” And the full honours were done. They were pleasant rooms, still unpapered, and the furniture chiefly of amber-coloured varnished deal; the drawing-room, chiefly with green furniture, with only a few brighter dashes here and there, and a sociable amount of comfortable litter already. The study was full of new shelves and old books, and across the window-sill lay a gray figure, with a book and a sheet of paper.
“You here, Terry! I thought you were gone with Rose,” said Julius, as the boy rose to greet Miss Bowater.
“She said I need not, and I hate those garden-parties,” said Terry; and they relieved him of their presence as soon as Jenny had paid her respects to the favourite prints and photographs on the walls.
“He has a passion for the history of Poland just now,” said Julius. “Sobieski is better company than he would meet at Duddingstone, I suspect—poor fellow! Lord Rathforlane has been so much excited by hearing of Driver’s successes as a coach, as to desire Terry to read with him for the Royal Engineers. The boys must get off his hands as soon as possible, he says, and Terry, being cleverest, must do so soonest; but the boy has seen the dullest side of soldiering, and hates it. His whole soul is set on scholarship. I am afraid it is a great mistake.”
“Can’t you persuade him?”
“We have both written; but Rose has no great hopes of the result. I wish he could follow his bent.”
“Yes,” said Jenny, lingering as she looked towards Church-house, “the young instinct ought not to be repressed.”
Julius knew that she was recollecting how Archie Douglas had entreated to go to sea, and the desire had been quashed because he was an only son. His inclination to speak was as perilous as if he had been Rosamond herself, and he did not feel it unfortunate that Jenny found she must no longer stay away from home.
CHAPTER XXII
Times Out of Joint
Alte der Meere,
Komm und höre;
Meine Frau, die Ilsebill,
Will nicht als ich will!
Life at Compton Poynsett was different from what it had been when the two youngest sons had been at home, and Julius and Rosamond in the house. The family circle had grown much more stiff and quiet, and the chief difference caused by Mrs. Poynsett’s presence was that Raymond was deprived of his refuge in her room. Cecil had taken a line of polite contempt. There was always a certain languid amount of indifferent conversation, ‘from the teeth outward,’ as Rosamond said. Every home engagement was submitted to the elder lady with elaborate scrupulousness, almost like irony. Visitors in the house or invitations out of it, were welcome breaks, and the whirl of society which vaguely alarmed Joanna Bowater was a relief to the inhabitants of the Hall.
Anne’s companionship was not lively for her mother-in-law, but she was brightening in the near prospect of Miles’s return, and they had established habits that carried them well through the evening. Anne covered screens and made scrap-books, and did other work for the bazaar; and Mrs. Poynsett cut out pictures, made suggestions, and had associations of her own with the combinations of which Anne had little notion. Or she dictated letters which Anne wrote, and through all these was a kindly, peaceful spirit, most unlike the dreary alienation in which Cecil persevered.
To Cecil this seemed the anxious desire for her lawful rights. She had been used to spend the greater part of the evening at the piano, but her awakened eyes perceived that this was a cover to Raymond’s conversations at his mother’s sofa; so she sat tying knots in stiff thread at her macrame lace pillow, making the bazaar a plea for nothing but work. Raymond used to arm himself with the newspapers as the safest point d’appui, and the talk was happiest when it only languished, for it could do much worse.
“Shall you be at Sirenwood to-morrow, Cecil?” asked Mrs. Poynsett, as she was wheeled to her station by the fire after dinner. “Will you kindly take charge of a little parcel for me? One of the Miss Strangeways asked me to look for some old franks, so Anne and I have been turning out my drawers.”
“Are they for sale?” asked Raymond.
“Yes,” said Cecil. “Bee Strangeways is collecting; she will pay for all that are new to her, and sell any duplicates.”
“Has she many?” asked Mrs. Poynsett, glad of this safe subject.
“Quantities; and very valuable ones. Her grandfather knew everybody, and was in the Ministry.”
“Was he?” said Raymond, surprised.
“Lord Lorimer?” said Mrs. Poynsett. “Not when I knew them. He was an old-fashioned Whig, with some peculiar crotchets, and never could work with any Cabinet.”
“Beatrice told me he was,” said Cecil, stiffly.
“I rather think he was Master of the Buckhounds for a little while in the Grey Ministry,” said Mrs. Poynsett, “but he gave it up because he would not vote with ministers on the poor laws.”
“I knew I was not mistaken in saying he was in the Ministry,” said Cecil.
“The Master of the Buckhounds is not in the Cabinet, Cecil,” said her husband.
“I never said he was. I said he was in office,” returned the infallible lady.
Mrs. Poynsett thought it well to interrupt by handing in an envelope franked by Sir Robert Peel; but Cecil at once declared that the writing was different from that which Bee already owned.
“Perhaps it is not the same Sir Robert,” said Mrs. Poynsett.
“She got it from the Queen, and they are all authenticated. The Queen newspaper, of course” (rather petulantly).
“Indisputable,” said Raymond; “but this frank contained a letter from the second Sir Robert to my father.”
Mrs. Poynsett made a sign of acquiescence, and Cecil pouted in her dignified way, though Mrs. Poynsett tried to improve matters by saying, “Then it appears that Miss Strangeways will have a series of Peel autographs, all in fact but the first generation.”
Common sense showed she was right, but Cecil still felt discontented, for she knew she had been resisted and confuted, and she believed it was all Mrs. Poynsett’s doing instead of Raymond’s.
And she became as mute as Anne for the next half-hour, nor did either Raymond or his mother venture on starting any fresh topic, lest there might be fresh jarring.
Only Anne presently came up to Mrs. Poynsett and tenderly purred with her over some little preparation for Miles.
Certainly Anne was the most improved in looks of all the three brides, who had arrived just a year ago. The thin, scraggy Scotch girl, with the flabby, washed-out look alternating with angular rigidity was gone, but the softening and opening of her expression, the light that had come into her eyes, and had made them a lovely blue instead of pale gray; the rose-tint on her cheeks, the delicate rounded contour of her face, the improved carriage of her really fine figure, the traces of style in the braiding of her profuse flaxen hair, and the taste that was beginning to conquer in the dress, were all due to the thought that the Salamanca might soon be in harbour. She sat among them still as a creature whose heart and spirit were not with them.
That some change must come was felt as inevitable by each woman, and it was Mrs. Poynsett who began, one forenoon when her son had brought a lease for her to sign. “Raymond,” said she, “you know Church-house is to be vacant at Michaelmas. I wish you would look at it, and see what repairs it wants, and if the drawing-room windows could be made to open on the lawn.”
“Are you hoping to tempt Miles to settle there?”
“No, I fear there is no hope of that; but I do not think an old broken-backed invalid ought to engross this great house.”
“Mother, I cannot hear you say so! This is your own house!”
“So is the other,” she said, trying to smile, “and much fitter for my needs, with Susan and Jenkins to look after me.”
“There is no fit place for you but this. You said that once.”
“Under very different circumstances. All the younger boys were still under my wing, and needed the home, and I was strong and vigorous. It would not have been acting right by them to have given up the place; but now they are all out in the world, and I am laid by, my stay here only interferes with what can be much better managed without me or my old servants.”
“I do not see that. If any one moves, it should be ourselves.”
“You are wanted on the spot continually. If Sirenwood were in the market, that might not be so much amiss.”
“I do not think that likely. They will delay the sale in the hope of Eleonora’s marrying a rich man; besides, Mr. Charnock has set his mind upon Swanslea. I hope this is from nothing Cecil has said or done!”
“Cecil wishes to part then? She has said nothing to me, but I see she has to you. Don’t be annoyed, Raymond; it is in the nature of things.”
“I believe it is all Lady Tyrrell’s doing. The mischief such a woman can do in the neighbourhood!”
“Perhaps it is only what any friend of Cecil would advise.”
“It is the very reverse of what I intended,” said Raymond, shading his face.
“My dear Raymond, I know what you meant, and what you wish; but I am also certain it is for no one’s happiness to go on in this way.”
He groaned.
“And the wife’s right comes first.”
“Not to this house.”
“But to this man. Indeed I see more hope of your happiness now than I did last year.”
“What, because she has delivered herself over bound hand and foot to Camilla Vivian?”
“No, because she is altered. Last year she was merely vexed at my position in the house. Now she is vexed at my position with you.”
“Very unjustly.”
“Hardly so. I should not have liked your father to be so much devoted to his mother. Remember, jealousy is a smoke that cannot exist without some warmth.”
“If she had any proper feeling for me, she would show it by her treatment of you.”
“That would be asking too much when she thinks I engross you.”
“Mother, while you show such marvellous candour and generosity, and she—”
“Hush! Raymond, leave it unsaid! We cannot expect her to see more than her own side of the question. She has been put into an avowedly trying position, and does not deserve hard judgment for not being happy in it. All that remains is to relieve her. Whether by my moving or yours is the question. I prefer the Church-house plan.”
“Either way is shame and misery to me,” broke out Raymond in a choked voice.
“Nonsense,” said his mother, trying to be cheerful. “You made an impracticable experiment, that’s all. Give Cecil free scope, let her feel that she has her due, and all will come right.”
“Nothing can be done till after the Wil’sbro’ business,” said Raymond, glad of the reprieve. He could not bear the prospect of banishment for his mother or himself from the home to which both were rooted; and the sentence of detachment from her was especially painful when she seemed his only consolation for his wife’s perverseness. Yet he was aware that he had been guilty of the original error, and was bound to give such compensation to his wife as was offered by his mother’s voluntary sacrifice. He was slow to broach the subject, but only the next morning came a question about an invitation to a dull house.
“But,” said Cecil, “it is better than home.” She spoke on purpose.
“I am sorry to hear you say so.”
“I can’t call it home where I am but a guest.”
“Well, Cecil, my mother offers to leave the home of her life and retire into Church-house.”
Cecil felt as if the screw she had been long working had come off in her hands. She frowned, she gazed, collecting her senses, while Raymond added, “It is to my intense grief and mortification, but I suppose you are gratified.”
“Uh, it would never do!” she exclaimed, to his surprise and pleasure.
“Quite right,” he returned. “Just what I felt. Nothing can make me so glad as to see that you think the idea as socking as I do.”
“Our going to Swanslea would be much better—far more natural, and no one could object. We could refurnish, and make it perfect; whereas nothing can be done to this place, so inconveniently built and buried in trees. I should feel much freer in a place of my own.”
“So that is what you meant when I thought you were thinking of my mother?”
“I am obliged to take thought for myself when you take heed to no one but her,” said Cecil; and as the carriage was at that moment announced, she left him. Which was the most sick at heart it would be hard to say, the wife with the sense that she was postponed in everything to the mother, the husband at the alienation that had never before been so fully expressed. Cecil’s errand was a council about the bazaar; and driving round by Sirenwood, Lady Tyrrell became her companion in the carriage. The quick eyes soon perceived that something had taken place, and confidence was soon drawn forth.
“The ice is broken; and by whom do you think?”
“By la belle mère? Skilful strategy to know when the position is not tenable.”
“She wants to retreat to Church-house.”
“Don’t consent to that.”
“I said I should prefer Swanslea for ourselves.”
“Hold to that, whatever you do. If she moves to the village you will have all the odium and none of the advantages. There will be the same daily haunt; and as to your freedom of action, there are no spies like the abdicated and their dependents. A very clever plan, but don’t be led away by it.”
“No,” said Cecil, resolutely; but after a moment: “It would be inconvenient to Raymond to live so far away from the property.”
“Swanslea will be property too, and a ride over on business is not like strolling in constantly.”
“I know I shall never feel like my own mistress in a house of hers.”
“Still less with her close by, with the Rectory family running in and out to exchange remarks. No, no, hold fast to insisting that she must not leave the ancestral halls. That you can do dutifully and gracefully.”
Cecil knew she had been betrayed into the contrary; but they were by this time in the High Street, bowing to others of the committee on their way to the town-hall, a structure of parti-coloured brick in harlequin patterns, with a peaked roof, all over little sham domes, which went far to justify its title of the Rat-house, since nothing larger could well use them. The façade was thus somewhat imposing; of the rear the less said the better; and as to the interior, it was at present one expanse of dust, impeded by scaffold-poles, and all the windows had large blotches of paint upon them.
It required a lively imagination to devise situations for the stalls; but Mrs. Duncombe valiantly tripped about, instructing her attendant carpenter with little assistance except from the well-experienced Miss Strangeways. The other ladies had enough to do in keeping their plumage unsoiled. Lady Tyrrell kept on a little peninsula of encaustic tile, Cecil hopped across bird-like and unsoiled, Miss Slater held her carmelite high and dry, but poor Miss Fuller’s pale blue and drab, trailing at every step, became constantly more blended!
The dust induced thirst. Lady Tyrrell lamented that the Wil’sbro’ confectioner was so far off and his ices doubtful, and Miss Slater suggested that she had been making a temperance effort by setting up an excellent widow in the lane that opened opposite to them in a shop with raspberry vinegar, ginger-beer, and the like mild compounds, and Mrs. Duncombe caught at the opportunity of exhibiting the sparkling water of the well which supplied this same lane. The widow lived in one of the tenements which Pettitt had renovated under her guidance, and on a loan advanced by Cecil, and she was proud of her work.
“Clio Tallboys would view this as a triumph,” said Mrs. Duncombe, as, standing on the steps of the town-hall, she surveyed the four tenements at the corner of the alley. “Not a man would stir in the business except Pettitt, who left it all to me.”
“Taking example by the Professor,” said Lady Tyrrell.
“It is strange,” said Miss Slater, “how much illness there has been ever since the people went into those houses. They are in my district, you know.”
“You should make them open their windows,” said Mrs. Duncombe.
“They lay it on the draughts.”
“And stuff up my ventilators. That is always the way they begin.”
The excellent widow herself had a bad finger, which was a great impediment in administering the cooling beverages, but these were so excellent as to suggest the furnishing of a stall therewith for the thirsty, as something sure to be popular and at small expense. Therewith the committee broke up, all having been present but Miss Moy, whose absence was not regretted, though apologized for by Mrs. Duncombe. “I could not get her away from the stables,” she said. “She and Bob would contemplate Dark Hag day and night, I believe.”
“I wouldn’t allow it,” said Lady Tyrrell.
Mrs. Duncombe shrugged her shoulders and laughed. “That’s Mr. Moy’s look-out,” she said.
“You don’t choose to interfere with her emancipation,” said Lady Tyrrell.
“Clio would tell you she could take care of herself at the stables as well as anywhere else.”
“Query?” said Lady Tyrrell. “Don’t get into a scrape, Bessie. Does your Captain report on the flirtation with young Simmonds?”
“Who is he?” asked Cecil
“The trainer’s son,” said Bessie. “It is only a bit of imitation of Aurora Floyd.”
“You know she’s an heiress,” said Lady Tyrrell. “You had better take care how you put such a temptation in his way.”
“I don’t suppose the Moys are anybody,” said Cecil.
“Not in your sense, my dear,” said Lady Tyrrell, laughing; “but from another level there’s a wide gap between the heiress of Proudfoot Lawn and the heir of the training stables.”
“Cecil looks simply disgusted,” said Bessie. “She can’t bear the Moys betwixt the wind and her nobility.”
“They are the great drawback to Swansea, I confess,” said Cecil.
“Oh! are you thinking of Swanslea?” cried Mrs Duncombe.
“Yes,” said Lady Tyrrell, “she is one to be congratulated on emancipation.”
“Well can I do so,” said Mrs. Duncombe. “Don’t I know what mothers-in-law are? Mine is the most wonderful old Goody, with exactly the notions of your meek Mrs. Miles.”
“Incompatibility decidedly,” said Lady Tyrrell.
“Only she was the Spartan mother combined with it,” continued Mrs. Duncombe. “When Bob was a little urchin, he once, in anticipation of his future tastes, committed the enormity of riding on a stick on Sunday; so she locked him up till he had learnt six verses of one of Watts’s hymns about going to church being like a little heaven below, isn’t it?”
“Increasing his longing that way,” said Lady Tyrrell.
“She doesn’t even light the drawing-room fire on Sunday, for fear people should not sit in their rooms and meditate,” continued Mrs. Duncombe. “Bob manages to be fond of her through all; but she regularly hates me.”