"Is she—well, is she like your Molly?—sweet-tempered and sensible—with her gloves always mended, and neat about the feet, and ready to do anything one asks her just as if doing it was the very thing she liked best in the world?"
Mr. Gibson's face relaxed now, and he could understand all the Squire's broken sentences and unexplained meanings.
"She is much prettier than Molly to begin with, and has very winning ways. She's always well-dressed and smart-looking, and I know she hasn't much to spend on her clothes, and always does what she's asked to do, and is ready enough with her pretty, lively answers. I don't think I ever saw her out of temper; but then I'm not sure if she takes things keenly to heart, and a certain obtuseness of feeling goes a great way towards a character for good temper, I've observed. Altogether I think Cynthia is one in a hundred."
The Squire meditated a little. "Your Molly is one in a thousand, to my mind. But then, you see, she comes of no family at all,—and I don't suppose she'll have a chance of much money." This he said as if he were thinking aloud, and without reference to Mr. Gibson, but it nettled the latter, and he replied somewhat impatiently,—
"Well, but as there's no question of Molly in this business, I don't see the use of bringing her name in, and considering either her family or her fortune."
"No, to be sure not," said the Squire, rousing up. "My wits had gone far afield, and I'll own I was only thinking what a pity it was she wouldn't do for Osborne. But, of course, it's out of the question—out of the question."
"Yes," said Mr. Gibson, "and if you will excuse me, Squire, I really must go now, and then you'll be at liberty to send your wits afield uninterrupted." This time he was at the door before the Squire called him back. He stood impatiently hitting his top-boots with his riding-whip, waiting for the interminable last words.
"I say, Gibson, we're old friends, and you're a fool if you take anything I say as an offence. Madam your wife and I didn't hit it off the only time I ever saw her. I won't say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it wasn't me. However, we'll pass that over. Suppose you bring her, and this girl Cynthia (which is as outlandish a Christian name as I'd wish to hear), and little Molly out here to lunch some day,—I'm more at my ease in my own house,—and I'm more sure to be civil, too. We need say nothing about Roger,—neither the lass nor me,—and you keep your wife's tongue quiet, if you can. It will only be like a compliment to you on your marriage, you know—and no one must take it for anything more. Mind, no allusion or mention of Roger, and this piece of folly. I shall see the girl then, and I can judge her for myself; for, as you say, that will be the best plan. Osborne will be here too; and he's always in his element talking to women. I sometimes think he's half a woman himself, he spends so much money and is so unreasonable."
The Squire was pleased with his own speech and his own thought, and smiled a little as he finished speaking. Mr. Gibson was both pleased and amused; and he smiled too, anxious as he was to be gone. The next Thursday was soon fixed upon as the day on which Mr. Gibson was to bring his womenkind out to the Hall. He thought that, on the whole, the interview had gone off a good deal better than he had expected, and felt rather proud of the invitation of which he was the bearer. Therefore Mrs. Gibson's manner of receiving it was an annoyance to him. She, meanwhile, had been considering herself as an injured woman ever since the evening of the day of Roger's departure; what business had any one had to speak as if the chances of Osborne's life being prolonged were infinitely small, if in fact the matter was uncertain? She liked Osborne extremely, much better than Roger; and would gladly have schemed to secure him for Cynthia, if she had not shrunk from the notion of her daughter's becoming a widow. For if Mrs. Gibson had ever felt anything acutely it was the death of Mr. Kirkpatrick; and, amiably callous as she was in most things, she recoiled from exposing her daughter wilfully to the same kind of suffering which she herself had experienced. But if she had only known Dr. Nicholls' opinion she would never have favoured Roger's suit; never. And then Mr. Gibson himself; why was he so cold and reserved in his treatment of her since that night of explanation? She had done nothing wrong; yet she was treated as though she were in disgrace. And everything about the house was flat just now. She even missed the little excitement of Roger's visits, and the watching of his attentions to Cynthia. Cynthia too was silent enough; and as for Molly, she was absolutely dull and out of spirits, a state of mind so annoying to Mrs. Gibson just now, that she vented some of her discontent upon the poor girl, from whom she feared neither complaint nor repartee.