“I know you are, my dear,” kindly replied Lady Argent, who had heard many of Nina’s spiritual upliftings from her admiring echo. “I should like you to see her, and I should like to meet her myself. But the fact is—it is a little awkward—I have never called on the people at the Towers.”
“Who are they?” said Frances wonderingly.
“Sir Giles and Lady Cotton, dear. He is the original founder of Cotton and Sons—the big ironmongers in the City. That is really why—not the shop, dear, of course, but the shocking way they treated the poor dear Fathers. I never could bear to go near them, and I had to give up the shop altogether, though I’d always dealt there for nearly twenty years. So I never called on Lady Cotton.”
“What did they do to the Fathers?” asked Frances with a curiosity unspoilt by the previous recital of many similar outrages.
“Oh, my dear child, it was all about some garden seats that the Prior ordered for the grounds of their house at Twickenham—for visitors, you know, because they naturally have no time to sit on garden seats themselves, as you can imagine, however tired they may get with all that manual labour, and getting up at four o’clock in the morning and everything; and there seems to have been some terrible misunderstanding—with the shop-people, you know, dear, and whether the seats were on approval or not. Anyway, they got left out in the rain all one night, and the paint was spoilt, and the Prior sent them back and said they couldn’t take them after all. But the shop-people were thoroughly unpleasant, and said the seats must be paid for just the same—most grasping and disagreeable, even though the letter of the law may have been on their side. I never quite understood the ins and outs of it all, but as the Prior, who was the most simple soul on earth—a Breton, dear, such a nice man—asked me himself: how they could tell whether they liked the benches or not until they had seen the effect of bad weather on them? Which sounds very reasonable indeed, but Cotton and Sons behaved quite shockingly, and even threatened to go to law about it. All very well for them, you know, dear—it would have been an advertisement in a way, but most unpleasant for the poor Fathers.”
“What was the end of it?”
“They had to pay for the garden seats, dear, and I never could sit on one with any pleasure, though they are strewn all over the garden at Twickenham. That is to say,” said Lady Argent, colouring faintly, “it was—friends—who actually paid for them, but I never said much to Ludovic about them. To this day he does not know why I have left off going to Cotton and Sons.”
Frances did not dare to make any further suggestion for a rapprochement between Lady Argent and the quondam proprietor of Cotton and Sons. She only looked wistfully and undecidedly at the letter in her hand.
“To be sure, my dear, I was forgetting about your friend. Of course, I do not suppose she has any idea of all this,” said Lady Argent generously, “since it is not a story that tells well for Cottons, and I do not suppose Sir Giles cares to dwell upon it. I really cannot make up my mind to call upon them—in fact, after all this time I don’t quite see how I could—but I shall be delighted if Mrs. Severing cares to come over any day next week. Ludovic could drive you over to fetch her in time for luncheon. Do write and suggest it, my dear.”
“Thank you so much. I know you will like her, and she would love to see you and the garden—and the chapel,” said Frances rather shyly. “You know she is thinking of becoming a Catholic.”