CHAPTER XIII
Mr Maguire's Courtship
After the scene between Miss Mackenzie and Miss Baker more than a week passed by before Miss Mackenzie saw any of her Littlebath friends; or, as she called them with much sadness when speaking of them to herself, her Littlebath acquaintances. Friends, or friend, she had none. It was a slow, heavy week with her, and it is hardly too much to say that every hour in it was spent in thinking of the attack which Mrs Stumfold had made upon her. When the first Sunday came, she went to church, and saw there Miss Baker, and Mrs Stumfold, and Mr Stumfold and Mr Maguire. She saw, indeed, many Stumfoldians, but it seemed that their eyes looked at her harshly, and she was quite sure that the coachmaker's wife treated her with marked incivility as they left the porch together. Miss Baker had frequently waited for her on Sunday mornings, and walked the length of two streets with her; but she encountered no Miss Baker near the church gate on this morning, and she was sure that Mrs Stumfold had prevailed against her. If it was to be thus with her, had she not better leave Littlebath as soon as possible? In the same solitude she lived the whole of the next week; with the same feelings did she go to church on the next Sunday; and then again was she maltreated by the upturned nose and half-averted eyes of the coachmaker's wife.
Life such as this would be impossible to her. Let any of my readers think of it, and then tell themselves whether it could be possible. Mariana's solitude in the moated grange was as nothing to hers. In granges, and such like rural retreats, people expect solitude; but Miss Mackenzie had gone to Littlebath to find companionship. Had she been utterly disappointed, and found none, that would have been bad; but she had found it and then lost it. Mariana, in her desolateness, was still waiting for the coming of some one; and so was Miss Mackenzie waiting, though she hardly knew for whom. For me, if I am to live in a moated grange, let it be in the country. Moated granges in the midst of populous towns are very terrible.
But on the Monday morning,—the morning of the second Monday after the Stumfoldian attack,—Mr Maguire came, and Mariana's weariness was, for the time, at an end. Susanna had hardly gone, and the breakfast things were still on the table, when the maid brought her up word that Mr Maguire was below, and would see her if she would allow him to come up. She had heard no ring at the bell, and having settled herself with a novel in the arm-chair, had almost ceased for the moment to think of Mr Maguire or of Mrs Stumfold. There was something so sudden in the request now made to her, that it took away her breath.
"Mr Maguire, Miss, the clergyman from Mr Stumfold's church," said the girl again.
It was necessary that she should give an answer, though she was ever so breathless.
"Ask Mr Maguire to walk up," she said; and then she began to bethink herself how she would behave to him.
He was there, however, before her thoughts were of much service to her, and she began by apologising for the breakfast things.