“It’s right queer your Tibbie should ha’ died on Miss Marigold’s wedding-day,” Mrs. Tanner mused. “Are you thinking o’ going to t’ Vicarage next week as afore?”
“I reckon I shall.”
“There’s that knee of yours, think on.”
“It’ll be better by then.”
“Ay, well, you’ll not do that much work, I’ll be bound!” Mrs. Tanner laughed. “Parson’s wife’ll be that throng telling you about t’ wedding!”
Mrs. Clapham said nothing in reply to that, but suddenly she felt as if she would not be able to endure hearing about the wedding. Indeed, at that moment she felt as if she would not be able to endure going to the Vicarage at all. Suddenly she had remembered the conversation of the evening before, and how in the midst of her own excitement the Vicar’s wife had never once remembered the charwoman’s hopes. It was almost as if, after some mysterious fashion, she had known what was going to happen. “Next week, as usual, please!” she had said, as she went away; and in spite of the new life coming so near that she had actually touched it with a hand, it was going to be “next week as usual, please,” for Mrs. Clapham, after all.
Mrs. Tanner, in the meantime, had passed on to another subject. “Yon Emma’s a real bad sort!” she shot out suddenly, and so fiercely that Mrs. Clapham felt as if she had received an actual peck. “Eh, but what an escape it’s been for them poor barns!”
“Ay ... and yet I can’t help wondering, though, all the same....” Mrs. Clapham was still searching for that hypothetical sprout.
“Wonder all t’ same what?”
“Whether she mightn’t ha’ treated ’em decently, after all?”