“Thriving, grandmother, in every way.”
“I am thankful!” Mrs. Rouncewell is fond of her son but has a plaintive feeling towards him, much as if he were a very honourable soldier who had gone over to the enemy.
“He is quite happy?” says she.
“Quite.”
“I am thankful! So he has brought you up to follow in his ways and has sent you into foreign countries and the like? Well, he knows best. There may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don’t understand. Though I am not young, either. And I have seen a quantity of good company too!”
“Grandmother,” says the young man, changing the subject, “what a very pretty girl that was I found with you just now. You called her Rosa?”
“Yes, child. She is daughter of a widow in the village. Maids are so hard to teach, now-a-days, that I have put her about me young. She’s an apt scholar and will do well. She shows the house already, very pretty. She lives with me at my table here.”
“I hope I have not driven her away?”
“She supposes we have family affairs to speak about, I dare say. She is very modest. It is a fine quality in a young woman. And scarcer,” says Mrs. Rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to its utmost limits, “than it formerly was!”
The young man inclines his head in acknowledgment of the precepts of experience. Mrs. Rouncewell listens.