‘Is it Mr. Crosby or Lady Forster?’ asks Susan anxiously.
‘Both of ’em,’ says Jacky, in his own sweet laconic style.
The smart little cart, with its wonderful pair of ponies, rattled up to the door, and Miss Barry, who had known that someone would come to fetch Susan, and had therefore put on her best bib and tucker, emerged from the flower-crowned porch of the Rectory to receive Lady Forster, her old face wreathed in smiles. It was sweet to her to see Susan accepted and admired by the Park people. ‘Our own sort of people’ proudly thought the poor old maid, who had struggled with much poverty all her life.
And Lady Forster was quite charming to her, insisting on going to see the old garden again, ‘which she quite remembered.’ Lady Forster had never stuck at a tarradiddle or two, and was, after seeing it, genuinely enthusiastic over its old-fashioned charms. Might she bring her friends to see it? They had never, never seen anything so lovely! It would be a charity to show them something human, these benighted town-people. To hear her, one would imagine she despised the town herself, whereas, as a fact, she could never live for six months out of it.
Miss Barry was elated—so elated, indeed, that she took a dreadful step. She invited Lady Forster and all her friends to tea the next Friday, without a thought as to the consequences—until afterwards! Lady Forster accepted the invitation with effusion. There was no getting out of it, Miss Barry felt during that dreadful ‘afterwards.’
Meantime Susan had found herself, comparatively speaking, alone with Crosby, when she came downstairs after putting on her best gown and hat. She had brought something with her besides the best gown and hat; a little silken bag, made out of a bit of lovely old brocade she had begged from Miss Barry a month ago. She had cut it out, and stitched it, and filled it with lavender-seeds, and worked on it at odd moments when no one but Betty could see her (she was afraid of the boys’ jokes) the words: ‘Mr. Crosby, from Susan.’
At first she had thought of buying something for him—something at Miss Ricketty’s, who really had, at times, quite wonderful things down from Dublin, but her soul revolted from that. What could she buy him that he would care for? And besides, to buy a thing for a person one liked, and one who had been so good to Bonnie! No; she could not. It seemed cold, unkind. So she decided on the little bag that was to lie in his drawer and perfume his handkerchiefs, and tell him sometimes of her—yes, her love for him! Because she did love him, if only for his goodness to the children, and to her Bonnie first of all.
She had been afraid to run the gauntlet of the boys’ criticisms, but Betty she clung to. A confidante one must have sometimes, or die.
‘You know he told me, Betty, when his birthday would be.’
‘Yes. So clever of him!’ said Betty, who, if she were at the point of death, could not have refrained from a joke.