Which was the cleverest deduction that this unsophisticated young farmer had ever arrived at in his life; but puzzling constantly over another matter had lent a new activity to his brain, and much worry had sharpened his wits.
Old Teesdale accepted his son's theory readily enough, but yet sorrowfully, and the more so because the more he saw of his old friend's child, the less he liked her.
Indeed, she was not at all an agreeable young person. It appeared that she had been merely reading in her own room, so when Arabella owned to having been asleep in hers, she looked duly and consciously superior. There was something comic about that look of conscious superiority which broke out upon this young lady's face upon the least provocation, but it is difficult to give an impression of it in words—it was so slight, and yet so plain. To be sure, she was the social as well as the intellectual superior of the simple folk at the farm, but that in itself was not so very much to be proud of, and at any rate one would not have expected a tolerably well-educated girl to exhale superiority with every breath. But this was the special weakness of Miss Miriam Oliver. Even the fact that some of the Teesdales read the Family Cherub was an opportunity which she could not resist. She took up a number and satirised the Family Cherub most unmercifully. Then she was queer about the poor old piano in the best parlour. She played a few bars upon it—she could play very well—and then jumped up shuddering. Certainly the piano was terribly out of tune; but not more so than this young Englishwoman's manners. In conversation with the Teesdales there was only one subject that really interested her.
It was a subject which had been fully dealt with at supper on the Saturday night, when Mrs. Teesdale had waxed very warm thereon. Old Teesdale and Arabella had listened in silence because to them it was not quite such a genial topic. John William had not been there; the misfortune was that he did sit down to the Sunday supper, when Miss Oliver brought up this subject again.
“Did my under-study like cocoa, then?” she inquired, having herself refused to take any, much to Mrs. T.'. discomfiture.
“You mean that impudent baggage?” said the latter. “Ay, she was the opposite extreme to you, Miriam. She took all she could get, you may be sure! She made the best use of her time!”
“Do tell me some more about her,” said Miss Oliver. “It is most interesting.”
“Nay, I would rather not speak of her,” replied Mrs. Teesdale, who was only too delighted to do so when sure of a sympathetic hearing. “It was the most impudent piece of wickedness that ever I heard tell of in my life.”
“The queer thing to me,” remarked Miss Oliver, “is that you ever should have believed her. Fancy taking such a creature for me! It was scarcely a compliment, Mrs. Teesdale. A more utterly vulgar person one could hardly wish to see.”
“My dear,” began Mr. Teesdale nervously, “she behaved very badly, we know; yet she had her good points——”