“I declare,” added Bella bitterly, “it’s a thankless task to get up anything for the people here. They’re so ignorant they don’t know what’s what. To think of passing over Charley’s recitation and encoring a silly old song like Lilac’s. It’s a good thing Mr Busby didn’t come, I think—he wouldn’t ’a been appreciated.”
“’Twasn’t only the poor people though,” said Agnetta. “I saw those friends of Mrs Leigh’s clapping like anything.”
“Ah, well,” said Mrs Greenways, “Lilac’s parents were greatly respected in the parish, and that’s the reason of it. She hasn’t got no cause to be set up as if it was her singing that pleased ’em.” Lilac had indeed very little opportunity of being “set up.” After the first glow of pleasure in her success had faded, she began to find more reason to be cast down. Her aunt and cousins were so jealous of the applause she had gained that they lost no occasion of putting her in what they called her proper place, of showing her that she was insignificant, a mere nobody; useless they could not now consider her, but she had to pay dearly for her short triumph at the concert. The air just now seemed full of sharp speeches and bitterness, and very often after a day of unkind buffets she cried herself to sleep, longing for someone to take her part, and sore at the injustice of it all.
“’Tain’t as if I’d wanted to sing,” she said to herself. “They made me, and now they flout me for it.”
But her unexpected appearance in public had another and most surprising result.
About a week after the concert, when the excitement was lessening and the preparations for Bella’s wedding were beginning to take its place, Mrs Greenways was sent for to the Rectory—Mrs Leigh wished to speak to her.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” she said to her husband before she started, “if it was to ask what Bella’d like for a present. What’d you say?”
“I shouldn’t wonder if it was nothing of the kind,” replied Mr Greenways. “More likely about the rent.”
But Mrs Greenways held to her first opinion. It would not be about the rent, for Mrs Leigh never mentioned it to her.
No. It was about the present; and very fitting too, when she called to mind how long her husband had been Mr Leigh’s tenant. To be sure he had generally owed some rent, but the Greenways had always held their heads high and been respected in spite of their debts.