“Oh no, thank you, we’ll wait! Don’t let us keep you, Mrs. Pettitt, it is only on business.”
“Ay!” said the other voice—female, and entirely untamed. “He’s your great ally about your gutters and drains, isn’t he?”
“The only landowner in Wil’sbro’ who has a particle of public spirit!” said Mrs. Duncombe.
Whereat good-natured Lady Rosamond could not but smile congratulation to the hair-cutter, who looked meekly elevated, while Tom whispered, “Proverb contradicted.”
But the other voice replied, “Of course—he’s a perfumer, learned in smells! You’d better drop it, Bessie! you’ll never make anything of it.”
“I’ll never drop what the health and life of hundreds of my fellow-creatures depend on! I wish I could make you understand, Gussie!”
“You’ll never do anything with my governor, if that’s your hope—you should hear him and the mum talking! ‘It’s all nonsense,’ he says; ‘I’m not going to annoy my tenants, and make myself unpopular, just to gratify a fashionable cry.’ ‘Well,’ says mumsey, ‘it is not what was thought the thing for ladies in my time; but you see, if Gussie goes along with it, she will have the key to all the best county society.’ ‘Bother the county society!’ says I. ‘Bessie Duncombe’s jolly enough—but such a stuck-up set as they all are at Compton, I’ll not run after, behaving so ill to the governor, too!’ However—”
“There’s a proverb about listeners!” said Rosamond, emerging when she felt as if she ought to hearken no longer, and finding Mrs. Duncombe leaning with her back to the counter, and a tall girl, a few degrees from beauty, in a riding-habit, sitting upon it.
They both laughed; and the girl added, “If you had waited a moment, Lady Rosamond, you would have heard that you were the only jolly one of all the b’iling!”
“Ah! we shall see where you are at the end of Mrs. Tallboys’ lectures!” said Mrs. Duncombe.