“Weds with Arthur!”
It was manifest that the idea had never entered Mrs Tremayne’s head until Philippa put it there.
“Prithee, wherefore no?” demanded the old lady coolly. “Orige means it. Mercy on us, Thekla Rose! art thou gone wood?”
“Mrs Philippa! Who e’er told you my Lady Enville meant any such thing?”
“The goose told me herself,” said Philippa bluntly, with a short laugh. “’Twas not in a civil fashion, Thekla. She said Arthur was good enough for Clare; it recked not whom Clare wedded withal. Marry come up! if I had not let mine head govern mine hands, I had fetched her a good crack on the crown with my staff. It could ne’er have hurt her brain—she has none. What were such women born for, do all the saints wit?—without it were to learn other folk patience.”
Thekla Tremayne was a woman, and a mother. She would have been more than human if she had not felt hurt for this insult to her boy. Was Clare, or anything else in the world, too good for her one darling?
“Come,—swallow it, Thekla, and have done,” said Philippa. “And by way of a morsel of sugar at after the wormwood, I will tell thee I do not think Clare hates him. I studied her face.”
“Mistress Philippa, you read faces so rarely, I would you could read Lucrece Enville. Margaret, which is eldest of the three, is plain reading; I conceive her conditions (understand her disposition) well. But Lucrece hath posed me ever since I knew her.”
“I will lay thee a broad shilling, child, I read her off like thou shouldst a hornbook when I see her. Ay, I have some skill touching faces: I have been seventy years at the work.”
That evening, just before supper, the indefatigable old lady marched into the hall at Enville Court. Lady Enville introduced her to Sir Thomas and Mistress Rachel, and presented her step-daughters and Jack. Philippa made her private comments on each.