“My dear Bertie,” said Mrs. Severing with dignity. “I really can’t discuss the matter with you if you will adopt this extraordinary pose of thinking that I have failed you in some mysterious manner. I never undertook to do more than take Frances to the convent and settle her in, and if circumstances allowed, make the Retreat with her. As it is, they—they haven’t allowed,” concluded Nina rather lamely.
“So I perceive, and I really can’t blame you, Nina dear. I never thought you in the least suited to that sort of place—one can’t fancy you happy in such silent, austere surroundings,” Bertha said affectionately. “But the question is, whether I’m to let my little girl stay on alone, or send Minnie down to join her—or I might even go myself.”
“I’m sure you’d be like a fish out of water, darling! Don’t dream of it. The whole thing is such an atmosphere of ‘Plain living and high thinking,’” cried Nina.
Bertha laughed good-humouredly.
“The very doctrine I’m always preaching myself! so I don’t know why you should think it wouldn’t suit me. But, as a matter of fact, I don’t quite see how I could get away just now—I’ve a committee meeting to-morrow, and the Mothers’ Union coming here on Saturday—and I want to keep an eye on that child of Farmer Trigg’s. I’m pretty sure the parents are letting it go to chapel with some of the Dissenters’ children.”
Nina looked profoundly bored.
“Surely that’s a matter for the parson, my dear.”
“If I didn’t tell the parson whose children are Church and whose Chapel,” cried Bertha warmly, “I don’t believe he’d ever find out. He’s over seventy, and as blind as a bat. It’s a perfect shame he doesn’t resign—as I said to the Bishop——”
Nina had heard her friend discourse before upon the deficiencies of that friend’s spiritual pastor and master and felt no slightest interest in the subject. So she exclaimed with an air of sudden inspiration:
“Bertie! Forgive me for interrupting you, darling—it doesn’t mean that I’m not interested, for I am, and I entirely think with you—but I’ve just had an idea. There’s quite a nice woman at the convent, to whom I should have recommended Frances most particularly, if only I hadn’t been in such a hurry, with simply no time to think of anything. But if I sent her one line——”