“Well, we shall have Jenny Bowater here in a week or two.”
“I thought she was your mother’s friend.”
“So she is. She is quite young enough to be yours.”
“I do not see anything remarkable about her.”
“No, I suppose there is not; but she is a very sensible superior person.”
“Indeed! In that commonplace family.”
“Poor Jenny has had an episode that removes her from the commonplace. Did you ever hear of poor Archie Douglas?”
“Was not he a good-for-nothing relation of your mother?”
“Not that exactly. He was the son of a good-for-nothing, I grant, whom a favourite cousin had unfortunately married, but he was an excellent fellow himself; and when his father died, she had Mrs. Douglas to live in that cottage by the Rectory, and sent the boy to school with us; then she got him into Proudfoot’s office—the solicitor at Backsworth, agent for everybody’s estates hereabouts. Well, there arose an attachment between him and Jenny; the Bowaters did not much like it, of course; but they are kind-hearted and good-natured, and gave consent, provided Archie got on in his profession. It was just at the time when poor Tom Vivian was exercising a great deal more influence than was good among the young men in the neighbourhood; and George Proudfoot was rather a joke for imitating him in every respect—from the colour of his dog-cart to the curl of his dog’s tail. I remember his laying a wager, and winning it too, that if he rode a donkey with his face to the tail, Proudfoot would do the same; but then, Vivian did everything with a grace and originality.”
“Like his sister.”