"Poor thing," exclaimed the stout Miss Grains, for she felt a ready sympathy, as an engaged young woman, with the whole of the rest of her sex who were in a similar position.
"Poor thing, indeed," cried the vicaress, "shameless thing, I call her; a girl who has been educated under my own eyes, who was actually confirmed in this very parish, calmly proposes to degrade herself, her parents and me by secretly marrying a disgusting foreigner, for foreigners are disgusting, as a rule. I shall forbid it, I shall distinctly forbid it; it's a duty I owe to dear Georgie. I am disappointed in Hephzibah Wallis."
"I'm afraid, Mrs. Dodd, it will be difficult to save the girl; here we are in King's Warren, while she is in Switzerland, and no doubt the man makes love to her," insinuated Mrs. Wurzel.
"Ah, yes," said the brewer's daughter softly, as she thought of her own little flirtation with the sallow French master, whose classes she had attended.
"They may be fascinating," said Mrs. Wurzel spitefully, "but they always smell of tobacco and never cut their nails."
Alas! the accusation was too true as regards the French master, at all events, and the brewer's daughter was temporarily extinguished.
"To a person in the position of Hephzibah Wallis," said the vicar's wife magisterially, "the length of their nails is of little importance; it's their want of principle that I object to; as for this creature Capt, like the rest of them he is, I suppose, an atheist, or perhaps worse, a Papist, for when he was here with his master he never once came inside the church. Goody Wallis has asked me to write to her, and I shall certainly do so at once, distinctly forbidding it. I haven't mentioned the matter to Anastatia, for she is so weak and romantic that she's quite capable of writing herself to the girl and inciting her to rebellion."
Here she carefully folded the letter and replaced it in her writing desk.
"And your sister-in-law's own affair, dear Mrs. Dodd, is it an indiscretion to ask you if it is settled yet?" said old Mrs. Wurzel with sympathetic interest.
"Stacey Dodd, Mrs. Wurzel, is, I regret to say, of a secretive nature; she does not confide in me. No, her own sister-in-law is the last person whom she would trust. But I believe, mind I do not state it as a fact, but I have reason to believe that she has refused the squire; his age was an obstacle, you know, and then Lucy would have been a difficulty. I don't think it would quite have been a bed of roses; that girl would have been a very serious responsibility indeed."