"And for the sake of a mere man," I added.
"No worse for a mere man than for a mere woman; the wrong thing was throwing me over at all, after all my kindness to her, and waiting for her for two months. Of course, if I'd known she was going to be married, I should have let her leg take her away permanently. But I can't imagine what put such an idea into her head."
"Probably the man she married," said Fay; "men have a way of putting such ideas into our heads at times."
"And at her age, too," continued the aggrieved one; "she owns to forty-five, and if people own to forty-five they'll own to anything. And as to the new cook's gravies, they really are not what we have been accustomed to at the Manor; so thin and tasteless; and I very much doubt if she is strict enough with Cutler about bringing in sufficient vegetables. Cutler requires a firm hand."
"And he gets it, Miss Kingsnorth," cried Frank: "so firm that I've seen him stagger under it at times."
Fay giggled. In fact, during the whole conversation she and Frank had kept catching each other's eye, and indulging in suppressed mirth.
"I don't know if you have noticed it, Mr. Blathwayte," Annabel went on, "but gardeners are so dreadfully obstinate about bringing in sufficient vegetables. Cutler is really terrible about the peas. He seems to think they are planted to be looked at instead of eaten. And that is where Mrs. Wilkinson was so satisfactory: she mastered him completely, and made him bring in whatever vegetables she required."
"That augurs well for her chances of conjugal felicity, and less well for those of her husband," I remarked.
"It was so silly of her to want a husband at her time of life," continued Annabel; "besides being so unfair to me. And what we are to do this year to eke out the Parish Nurse money I cannot imagine. I had a Sale of Work two years ago, and a Concert two years before that, and I don't want to have either of them again so soon, though I don't see what else I can have, and we haven't money enough without."
"It is such a business getting up a Sale of Work in a small parish like this," said Arthur.