Miss Ricketty is the wit, and therefore the scourge, of the village (very little wit suffices for a village such as Curraghcloyne), and though nearly stone-deaf, knows more of the ‘goings on’ of her neighbours than anyone else in the small town.
Of course there is a bank and a post-office in Curraghcloyne. And a town-hall, where the future tenors and sopranos of the world sometimes ‘kindly consent’ to sing to the poor people round them. And there is the draper’s shop called ‘The Emporium,’ very justly, of course; and there is a market-place too, where everyone says the beef and mutton are both bad and dear. But even the interest of all these fails before the caustic tongue of Miss Ricketty.
Just as Susan reaches the window of the hotel that holds Miss Ricketty’s show of notepaper, ballads, bull’s-eyes, woollen mufflers, the latest thing in veils ten years old, and the flotsam and jetsam of various seasons past, she finds herself face to face with Wyndham.
‘You have come back!’ says she involuntarily. She is glad to see him. He is—well, scarcely an old friend, because the distances between his comings and goings to the Cottage make such broad margins on the leaf of time that he has hardly come into quite close contact with the family at the Rectory. But they have known him for a long time, and they have liked him, and there is a good deal of soft, pleasurable welcome in the glance that Susan gives him. He has been away now, she tells herself, quite two months.
‘Yes,’ says Wyndham, smiling. His smile is a little preoccupied, however. ‘And how are you, Jacky? My goodness, how we are grown! You’ll be as big as Ricketty presently if you don’t put a weight on your head.’
Jacky sniggles, but, like Wyndham’s smile, his sniggles are a little preoccupied. Having shaken hands with the latter, he retires behind Susan, and wonders if Wyndham is going up to the Cottage, and if he is, will the ghost catch him? He rather hopes it. It would leave him—Jacky—free, any way, and Mr. Wyndham is a big man and would be a better match for her.
Susan, too, is thinking of the ghost. As Wyndham is facing now, the Cottage lies before him. Is he going to see the mysterious ‘prisoner’? Perhaps he is married to her! This seems delightful—like an old romance, so much nicer than the commonplace marriages of to-day. She scans Wyndham’s face swiftly with a view to saying something nice and kind to him, if she sees anything there to help her to believe in this sentimental marriage. But evidently she sees nothing, because she says nothing. After all, she tells herself, it is of course a secret.
‘I hope you will come in and see father,’ she says presently, when she and Wyndham have discussed the town and its inhabitants, and she has told him all the news. He is in the habit of sleeping at the Cottage whenever he does come down, and in the habit, too, of spending his evenings at the Rectory, which is only just over the way from the Cottage.
‘Not to-night, I’m afraid,’ says Wyndham. ‘I must go back to town by the evening train.’
A slight frown gathers on his brow, but he dismisses it as he bids her good-bye.