'He makes himself very useful while Mr. Dutton is away,' added Mary, 'taking his young men's class and all.'
'Oh! is Mr. Dutton away?'
'Yes; he has had to be in London a great deal of late. I am afraid he may have to live there altogether.'
'What a grievous pity!'
'He won't be anywhere without doing good,' said Miss Headworth, 'but I sometimes wish we had his cool good sense here.'
'And how is Mr. Spyers,' asked Nuttie. She felt shy of asking for Gerard Godfrey, or perhaps she thought she ought to be shy of his name, and kept hoping that it would come in naturally.
'Mr. Spyers is very well. Very busy of course, and very much delighted with your mother's gifts to the church. All her own work, isn't it, Nuttie?'
'Yes; every bit. She does lots of embroidery and work of all kinds when she is waiting for him or sitting with him, and luckily it has never occurred to him to ask what it is for.'
The two ladies knew well what was meant by him, but they would not pursue the subject, and proceeded to put Nuttie au courant with St. Ambrose affairs—how last year's mission had produced apparently an immense effect in the town, and how the improvement had been ebbing ever since, but had left various individual gains, and stirred up more than one good person who had hitherto thought it enough to save one's own soul and let other people alone; how Mr. Spyers was endeavouring to bind people together in a guild; how a violent gust of temperance orators had come down upon the place, and altogether fascinated and carried away Gerard Godfrey.
There was his name at last, and Nuttie was rather gratified to feel herself blushing as she asked, 'Ah! poor Gerard—how is he?'