“Now, you must forgive me, but I must go and hunt up my chick-a-biddy. I don’t know where the child’s got to since supper.”
“Now, my dear Mrs. Tregaskis, listen to me, and let that child alone. Let her alone, I say,” commanded Mrs. Mulholland, in accents of authority such as had never been addressed to the astonished Bertha since her schooldays.
Mrs. Tregaskis drew herself up to the full of her very considerable height, looked Mrs. Mulholland up and down with an expression of astounded contempt, and rose without a word from her seat. Upon which Mrs. Mulholland, with surprising and most unexpected agility, rose also, and planted her enormous bulk against the closed door of the small parlour.
“Now, listen to me,” was her superfluous injunction as she and Mrs. Tregaskis stood facing one another, at a distance of about two yards apart. “You’ll think me very strange, I dare say”—Bertha’s face showed the absolute correctness of this supposition—“very strange, perhaps. But what people think doesn’t matter to me, Mrs. Tregaskis. We’ve got to trample human respect underfoot in a matter like this. I shouldn’t feel that I was doing my duty if I didn’t speak out. You may say it’s no business of mine, but Miss Grantham has talked to me—very fully, I may say, on the whole—and so’s Mère Pauline. That child wishes to be received into the Church, Mrs. Tregaskis.”
“I see no reason for discussing the subject with you,” said Bertha, thoroughly incensed, and ignoring the very tangible reason in front of her. “Kindly let me pass out of that door.”
But the person who is hampered by the instincts of good breeding is at a disadvantage when dealing with an antagonist prepared serenely to ignore even the more elementary canons of behaviour. It did not occur to Bertha, resolute as she was, to launch herself bodily upon the sturdy old woman who stood in front of the door and force a way past her. Still less did it occur to her that Mrs. Mulholland would continue to maintain her spread-eagle attitude the more defiantly for this very forbearance.
But no trifling considerations for the ethics of good taste were ever destined to stand in Mrs. Mulholland’s way.
Her massive bulk against the door, her large hands gesticulating emphatically, she freed her mind in hoarse, vehement accents that completely overpowered the spasmodic attempts of her audience to interrupt her.
“I know very well that Mère Pauline’s been talking to you, and that good holy Prior. But there it is, people in the world look upon priests and nuns as unpractical—they won’t listen. But I tell you, Mrs. Tregaskis, speaking as one woman who’s seen life to another, that if ever there was a case of absolute genuine conversion, it’s that child—that ward of yours, or whatever she is. If you withhold her from the true Light, out of worldly consideration or any other motive, you’ll be doing a most serious wrong, Mrs. Tregaskis—a most serious wrong. I’m all for obedience and discipline, as a rule. ‘If you don’t obey,’ I say, ‘you’ll never know how to command,’ is what I say. But if little Miss Grantham comes to me for advice, I shall tell her just what I think.”
“Kindly let me——”