"She never will come in to see us. Mamma has asked her to dinner and to drink tea ever so often, but she never comes. She calls perhaps once in two or three months in a formal way, and that is all we see of her."
"Do you like her?" he asked.
"How can I say, when I so seldom see her."
"I do. I like her very much. I go and see her often; and I'm sure of this;—she is quite a lady. Mamma asked her to go to Carstairs for the holidays because of what I said."
"She is not going?"
"No; neither of them will come. I wish they would; and oh, Miss Wortle, I do so wish you were going to be there too." This is all that was said of peculiar tenderness between them on that walk home.
Late in the evening,—so late that the boys had already gone to bed,—the Doctor sent again for Mr. Peacocke. "I should not have troubled you to-night," he said, "only that I have heard something from Pritchett." Pritchett was the rectory gardener who had charge also of the school buildings, and was a person of great authority in the establishment. He, as well the Doctor, held Mr. Peacocke in great respect, and would have been almost as unwilling as the Doctor himself to tell stories to the schoolmaster's discredit. "They are saying down at the Lamb"—the Lamb was the Bowick public-house—"that Lefroy told them all yesterday—" the Doctor hesitated before he could tell it.
"That my wife is not my wife?"
"Just so."
"Of course I am prepared for it. I knew that it would be so; did not you?"