Bill Patch and Nancy, however, were the joint authors of the piece, and so the conversation gradually veered round to personalities again.
Mrs. Kendal said that it was a great pity about Captain Patch and that she had always thought him a nice young fellow, before.
I declined, tacitly, to unravel these implications, and on the whole I was relieved when she worked her way back to the Nancy Fazackerly theme once more.
Everybody’s inflections, if not their words, were friendly and hopeful when they talked about Nancy Fazackerly and Christopher Ambrey. Almost equally universal were the characteristics of the words and inflections applied to Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.
These were either condemnatory or regretful—and sometimes both.
Chapter Nine
It was an unusually eventful summer in Cross Loman.
The only large house in the neighborhood which is ever let, Grainges, was taken for three months by a wealthy fellow of the name of Leeds and his wife. Lady Annabel Bending was quite excited and said that they had “known H. E. in his Zanzibar days.” It was one of those links of which we had so often heard her speak, and she naturally called upon them at once. Then there was a tea party in their honor at the rectory, and Lady Annabel stood on the steps smiling and said a few appropriate words to each guest as she shook hands and at intervals raised her voice and said very clearly and distinctly:
“To your right as you go in. The door is open....”
Most of Cross Loman knows the inside of the rectory pretty well, and it is not a very large house, so that Lady Annabel’s directions were not really exactly necessary, but it was all very masterly and well organized, and we went into the drawing-room and avoided the dining room, which was the only other room opening out of the hall.