“Oh, Mrs. Tregaskis, how can you talk so ridiculously?” protested Minnie. “Why, you’re the youngest woman I know. They always say a woman is only as old as she looks.”
“Minnie, Minnie, don’t flatter! You know that spades are always spades with me. But I don’t mind telling you a little secret. I think we shall see Rosamund happy yet.”
“Oh! Do you mean...? But I used to think—only, of course, one can never tell——”
“You mean Morris. She won’t have him, my dear. He’s not the sort of man for her—he’s too young, for one thing. No, no—Ludovic Argent and the Wye Valley, for Rosamund, is what I think. I don’t mind telling you that I’ve thought so all along, Minnie. I like Morris—he and I are huge chums, as you know—but ever since that boy and girl affair at home, ages ago, I’ve always said they weren’t suited to one another.”
“Well, we shall see what we shall see, I suppose,” was the timorous reply of Miss Blandflower, which she hazarded as though voicing the most startling of suggestions.
“It would please Sybil very much, I fancy. Of course I know perfectly well that she wanted it to be Francie—but I suppose Rosamund is next best, even though she isn’t an R.C.”
“But then neither is he.”
“Exactly. But poor dear Sybil has the subject on the brain, and always fancies that her prayers will ‘convert’ him, as she calls it, one of these days. I never saw any woman so utterly gone to pieces as Sybil—sometimes I almost think she’s in her second childhood to hear her babble as she does—there’s no other word for it—simply babble.”
“Babble, babble, little brook,” idiotically murmured Minnie, with a pair of garden scissors between her teeth, and both hands full of tangled string.
“Here, I’ll hold that for you. No, no, not the string—the scissors. Give them to me, Minnie, you’ll break your teeth if you do that. Very well—but you’re only getting it into a muddle. What was I saying?—oh, about Sybil. Poor dear! One of the reasons that made me come here was the thought of having her for a neighbour. We were the greatest of friends, as girls, though there’s nearly ten years between us. There might be twenty, now. Minnie, whatever happens, I do pray and trust that I shall never die at the top first, as they say. If you see any tendency to garrulous old age, you must tell me so in good time. It’s much the truest kindness in the long run. One would so much rather spend one’s last few years silently.”