"I shall certainly do that. Mr. Grafton and Sir Alexander can shoot together and all that sort of thing, but it would be distinctly wrong for him to allow young girls like his daughters to be intimate with people like the Manserghs."
"The sons are nice, though. Fortunately Lady Mansergh is not their mother."
"Richard is away at sea most of the time, and Geoffrey is not particularly nice, begging your pardon. I saw him in the stalls of a theatre last year with a woman whose hair I feel sure was dyed. He is probably going the same way as his father. It would be an insult to a young and pure girl like Miss Grafton to encourage anything like intimacy between them."
"I expect they will make friends with the Pembertons. There are three girls in their family and three in that."
"It would be a very bad thing if they did. Three girls with the tastes of grooms, and the manners too. I shall never forget the insolent way in which that youngest one asked me if I didn't know what a bit of ribbon tied round a horse's tail meant when I was standing behind her at that meet at Surley Green, and when I didn't move at once that young cub of a brother who was with her said: 'Well, sir, if you want to be kicked!' And then they both laughed in the vulgarest fashion. Really the manners of some of the people about here who ought to know better are beyond belief. The Pembertons have never had the politeness to call on us—which is something to be thankful for, anyhow, though it is, of course, a slight on people in our position, and no doubt meant as such. Of course they will call on the Graftons. They will expect to get something out of them. But I shall warn Grafton to be careful. He won't want his daughters to acquire their stable manners."
"No; that would be a pity. I wish Vera Beckley had been as nice as we thought she was at first. She would have been a nice friend for these girls. I never quite understood why she suddenly took to cutting us dead, and Mrs. Beckley left off asking us to the house, when they had asked us so often and we seemed real friends. I have sometimes thought of asking her. I am sure there is a misunderstanding, which could be cleared up."
The Vicar grew a trifle red. "You will not do anything of the sort," he said. "If the Beckleys can do without us we can do very well without them."
"You used to be so fond of Vera, Albert," said Mrs. Mercer reflectively, "and she of you. You often used to say it was like having a daughter of your own. I wonder what it was that made her turn like that."
"We were deceived in her, that was all," said Albert, who had recovered his equanimity. "She is not a nice girl. A clergyman has opportunities of finding out these things, and——"
"Oh, then there was something that you knew about, and that you haven't told me."