“I do lack courage. That’s just it,” said Mrs. Gresham, still giving a twist here and a set there to some of the small sprigs which constituted the background of her bouquet. “I do lack courage—to have ill motives imputed to me. I was thinking of saying something, and I am afraid, and therefore I will not say it. And now, if you like, I will be ready to take you out in ten minutes.”
But Miss Dunstable was not going to be put off in this way. And to tell the truth, I must admit that her friend Mrs. Gresham was not using her altogether well. She should either have held her peace on the matter altogether,—which would probably have been her wiser course,—or she should have declared her own ideas boldly, feeling secure in her own conscience as to her own motives. “I shall not stir from this room,” said Miss Dunstable, “till I have had this matter out with you. And as for imputations,—my imputing bad motives to you,—I don’t know how far you may be joking, and saying what you call sharp things to me; but you have no right to think that I should think evil of you. If you really do think so, it is treason to the love I have for you. If I thought that you thought so, I could not remain in the house with you. What! you are not able to know the difference which one makes between one’s real friends and one’s mock friends! I don’t believe it of you, and I know you are only striving to bully me.” And Miss Dunstable now took her turn of walking up and down the room.
“Well, she shan’t be bullied,” said Mrs. Gresham, leaving her flowers, and putting her arm round her friend’s waist;—“at least, not here, in this house, although she is sometimes such a bully herself.”
“Mary, you have gone too far about this to go back. Tell me what it was that was on your mind, and as far as it concerns me, I will answer you honestly.”
Mrs. Gresham now began to repent that she had made her little attempt. That uttering of hints in a half-joking way was all very well, and might possibly bring about the desired result, without the necessity of any formal suggestion on her part; but now she was so brought to book that she must say something formal. She must commit herself to the expression of her own wishes, and to an expression also of an opinion as to what had been the wishes of her friend; and this she must do without being able to say anything as to the wishes of that third person.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose you know what I meant.”
“I suppose I did,” said Miss Dunstable; “but it is not at all the less necessary that you should say it out. I am not to commit myself by my interpretation of your thoughts, while you remain perfectly secure in having only hinted your own. I hate hints, as I do—the mischief. I go in for the bishop’s doctrine. Magna est veritas.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Gresham.
“Ah! but I do,” said Miss Dunstable. “And therefore go on, or for ever hold your peace.”
“That’s just it,” said Mrs. Gresham.