"Haven't you given her a word of warning?" asked Ethel.
"I tried to do so. But she misunderstood me. I've said that it's all innocence on her part. And it's difficult for a man to advise in these matters."
"Couldn't Mrs. Mercer?"
"My wife doesn't see quite eye to eye with me in this, unfortunately. She thinks I made a mistake in mentioning the matter to Mollie at all. Perhaps it would have been better if I'd left it to her. But she couldn't do anything now."
"Couldn't you say anything to Mrs. Walter?"
"I did that. She was there when I talked to Mollie. I'm sorry to say that she took offence. I ought really to have talked to them separately. They listened to what I had to say at first, and seemed quite to realise that a mistake had been made in Mollie going over to Grays in that way before Mrs. Pemberton had called on Mrs. Walter. It was even doubtful at that time whether she would call on her, although she did so afterwards. But when I mentioned young Pemberton, they simply wouldn't listen to me. Mollie went out of the room with her head in the air, and Mrs. Walter took the line that I had no right to interfere with the girl at all in such matters as that. Why, those are the very matters that a man of the world, as I suppose one can be as well as being a Christian, ought to counsel a girl about, if he's on such terms with her as to stand for father or brother, as I have been with Mollie. Don't you think I'm right?"
"Well, I don't know," said Rhoda. "If she'd just taken it naturally, and hadn't been thinking of any harm, it would be likely to offend her to have it put to her in that way; especially if she was inclined to like him and didn't know it yet."
"Perhaps it was a mistake," the Vicar admitted again. "I suppose I ought to have talked to Mrs. Walter first. But they had both been so amenable in the way they had taken advice from me generally, in things that they couldn't be expected to know about themselves, and so grateful for my friendship and interest in them, that it never occurred to me not to say exactly what I thought. One lives and learns. There's very little real gratitude in the world. Mollie has got thoroughly in with the Graftons now, and all I've done for her goes for nothing, or very little. And even Mrs. Walter has laid herself out to flatter and please them, in a way I didn't think it was in her to do. She is always running after Miss Waterhouse, and asking her to the Cottage. They both pretend that nothing is altered—she and Mollie—but it's plain enough that now they think themselves on a level with the Graftons—well, they have got where they want to be and can kick down the ladder that led them there. That's about what it comes to, and I can't help feeling rather sore about it. Well, I've unburdened myself to you, and it's done me good. Of course you'll keep what I say to yourselves."
"Oh, of course," said Rhoda. "Confidences with us are sacred. Then Mollie still goes over to Grays? Her mother lets her?"
"She goes over with the Graftons. I don't fancy she has been by herself; but I never ask. I don't mention the subject at all, and naturally they would be ashamed of bringing it up themselves before me."