"Do you really?" said Lady Shuttleworth. "Then we shall get on capitally. It's what I like best myself. And you've come too," she went on, turning to Mrs. Morrison, "to make friends with your new parishioner? Why, Robin, and you too?"
"Oh, I'm only accidental," said Robin quickly. "Only a restorer of lost property. And I'm just going," he added, beginning to make hasty adieux; for Lady Shuttleworth invariably produced a conviction in him that his clothes didn't fit and wanted brushing badly, and no young man so attentive to his appearance as Robin could be expected to enjoy that. He fled therefore, feeling that even Miss Schultz's loveliness would not make up for Lady Shuttleworth's eyes; and in the passage, from whence Mrs. Pearce had retreated, removing herself as far as might be from the awful lady to whom her father-in-law owed rent and who saw every hole, Robin pounced on his Uncle Cox's umbrella, tucked is once more beneath his arm, and bore it swiftly back to the stand where it had spent five peaceful years. "Really old women are rather terrible things," he thought as he dropped it in again. "I wonder what they're here for."
"Ah, it's there, I see," remarked his mother that night as she passed through the hall on her way to dinner.
"What is?" inquired Robin who was just behind her.
"Your Uncle Cox's umbrella."
"Dear mater, why this extreme interest in my Uncle Cox's umbrella?"
"I'm glad to see it back again, that's all. One gets so used to things."
Lady Shuttleworth and his mother—I shudder to think that it is possible Robin included his mother in the reflection about old women, but on the other hand one never can tell—had stayed on at the farm for another twenty minutes after he left. They would have stayed longer, for Lady Shuttleworth was more interested in Priscilla than she had ever been in any girl before, and Mrs. Morrison, who saw this interest and heard the kind speeches, had changed altogether from ice to amiability, crushing her leaflets in her hand and more than once expressing hopes that Miss Neumann-Schultz would soon come up to tea and learn to know and like Netta—I repeat, they would have stayed much longer, but that an extremely odd thing happened.
Priscilla had been charming; chatting with what seemed absolute frankness about her future life in the cottages, answering little questionings of Lady Shuttleworth's with a discretion and plausibility that would have warmed Fritzing's anxious heart, dwelling most, for here the ground was safest, on her uncle, his work, his gifts and character, and Lady Shuttleworth, completely fascinated, had offered her help of every sort, help in the arranging of her little home, in the planting of its garden, even in the building of those bathrooms about which Tussie had been told by Mr. Dawson. She thought the desire for many bathrooms entirely praiseworthy, and only a sign of lunacy in persons of small means. Fritzing had assured Tussie that he had money enough for the bathrooms; and if his poetic niece liked everybody about her to be nicely washed was not that a taste to be applauded? Perhaps Lady Shuttleworth expatiated on plans and probable building-costs longer than Priscilla was able to be interested; perhaps she was over-explanatory of practical details; anyhow Priscilla's attention began to wander, and she gradually became very tired of her callers. She answered in monosyllables, and her smile grew vague. Then suddenly, at the first full stop Lady Shuttleworth reached in a sentence about sanitation—the entire paragraph was never finished—she got up with her usual deliberate grace, and held out her hand.
"It has been very kind of you to come and see me," she said to the astounded lady, with a little gracious smile. "I hope you will both come again another time."