"I'm sure I'm trying with all my might to tell you everything just as it happened."
"What did you hear from Mrs. Dawes?"
"Why, that Molly and Mr. Preston were keeping company just as if she was a maid-servant and he was a gardener: meeting at all sorts of improper times and places, and fainting away in his arms, and out at night together, and writing to each other, and slipping their letters into each other's hands; and that was what I was talking about, sister, for I next door to saw that done once. I saw her with my own eyes run across the street to Grinstead's, where he was, for we had just left him there; with a letter in her hand, too, which was not there when she came back all fluttered and blushing. But I never thought anything of it at the time; but now all the town is talking about it, and crying shame, and saying they ought to be married." Miss Phœbe sank into sobbing again; but was suddenly roused by a good box on her ear. Miss Browning was standing over her almost trembling with passion.
"Phœbe, if ever I hear you say such things again, I'll turn you out of the house that minute."
"I only said what Mrs. Dawes said, and you asked me what it was," replied Miss Phœbe, humbly and meekly. "Dorothy, you should not have done that."
"Never mind whether I should or I shouldn't. That's not the matter in hand. What I've got to decide is, how to put a stop to all these lies."
"But, Dorothy, they are not all lies—if you will call them so; I'm afraid some things are true; though I stuck to their being false when Mrs. Dawes told me of them."
"If I go to Mrs. Dawes, and she repeats them to me, I shall slap her face or box her ears I'm afraid, for I couldn't stand tales being told of poor Mary's daughter, as if they were just a stirring piece of news like James Horrocks' pig with two heads," said Miss Browning, meditating aloud. "That would do harm instead of good. Phœbe, I'm really sorry I boxed your ears, only I should do it again if you said the same things." Phœbe sate down by her sister, and took hold of one of her withered hands, and began caressing it, which was her way of accepting her sister's expression of regret. "If I speak to Molly, the child will deny it, if she's half as good-for-nothing as they say; and if she's not, she'll only worry herself to death. No, that won't do. Mrs. Goodenough—but she's a donkey; and if I convinced her, she could never convince any one else. No; Mrs. Dawes, who told you, shall tell me, and I'll tie my hands together inside my muff, and bind myself over to keep the peace. And when I've heard what is to be heard, I'll put the matter into Mr. Gibson's hands. That's what I'll do. So it's no use your saying anything against it, Phœbe, for I shan't attend to you."
Miss Browning went to Mrs. Dawes' and began civilly enough to make inquiries concerning the reports current in Hollingford about Molly and Mr. Preston; and Mrs. Dawes fell into the snare, and told all the real and fictitious circumstances of the story in circulation, quite unaware of the storm that was gathering and ready to fall upon her as soon as she stopped speaking. But she had not the long habit of reverence for Miss Browning which would have kept so many Hollingford ladies from justifying themselves if she found fault. Mrs. Dawes stood up for herself and her own veracity, bringing out fresh scandal, which she said she did not believe, but that many did; and adducing so much evidence as to the truth of what she had said and did believe, that Miss Browning was almost quelled, and sate silent and miserable at the end of Mrs. Dawes' justification of herself.
"Well!" she said at length, rising up from her chair as she spoke, "I'm very sorry I've lived till this day; it's a blow to me just as if I had heard of such goings-on in my own flesh and blood. I suppose I ought to apologize to you, Mrs. Dawes, for what I said; but I've no heart to do it to-day. I ought not to have spoken as I did; but that's nothing to this affair, you see."