‘Which means to say that so should I.’
‘No, you did not know so much of the evils of the world.’
‘I told you before, Mr. Pendy, that I am twenty times more sophisticated than you are. You talk of knowing the world! I wish I didn’t. I’m tired of everybody.’
And on the way home she described her expedition, and had the pleasure of the curate’s sympathy, if not his entire approval. Perhaps there was no other being whom she so thoroughly treated as a friend, actually like a woman friend, chiefly because he thoroughly believed in her, and was very blind to her faults. Robert would have given worlds to have found her once what Mr. Prendergast found her always.
She left him to wait in the drawing-room, while she went on her mission, but presently rushed back in a fury. Nobody cared a straw for the catastrophe. Lolly begged her not to be so excited about a trifle, it made her quite nervous; and the others laughed at her; Rashe pretended to think it a fine chance to have changed ‘the life of an early Christian’ for the triumphs of the stage; and Charles scouted the idea of writing to the man’s employer. ‘He call Derval to account for all the tricks of his fiddlers and singers? Much obliged!’
Mr. Prendergast decided on going to town by the next train, to make inquiries of Derval himself, without further loss of time,
and Cilly declared that she would go with him and force the conceited professor to attend; but the curate, who had never found any difficulty in enforcing his own dignity, and thought it no business for a young lady, declined her company, unless, he said, she were to spend the day with Miss Charlecote.
‘I’ve a great mind to go to her for good and all. Let her fall upon me for all and sundry. It will do me good to hear a decent woman speak again! besides, poor old soul, she will be so highly gratified, that she will be quite meek’ (and so will some one else, quoth the perverse little heart); ‘I’ll put up a few things, and not delay you.’
‘This is very sudden!’ said the curate, wishing to keep the peace between her and her friends, and not willing that his sunbeam should fleet ‘so like the Borealis race!’ ‘Will it not annoy your cousins?’
‘They ought to be annoyed!’