When I had finished laughing, I said:
"Susan, you remember Mrs. Hobbs's dreadful mousseline sauce? Till to-day, I would never have believed that there was any subject in the heavens above or in the earth beneath, about which Mrs. Hobbs knew less than she did about cooking. I was wrong."
"If he's proper Lord Ruddington, Miss, I don't see how he can be named Henry," persisted Susan doggedly. "I wonder, Miss, ought we to write to Mrs. Juggins?"
"Mrs. Juggins?"
"Yes, Miss. He says she's the housekeeper at the Towers."
Positively the stupid creature believed that Lord Ruddington had seriously referred her to an actually existing dame of the name of Juggins. Really, I haven't the patience to set down half the ridiculous things she said. She is certain that her letters don't weigh "all those ounces." She is aghast at the bad temper and obstinacy, which must truly be traits in Ruddington's character, "because he admits it, Miss, himself." She is surprised that he should be brooding so bitterly over his wasted tuppence; "though they do say, Miss, that the richer people are, the meaner they are in little things, and that's why they've got rich." She is not romantically exaltée at the news that he has never loved another. But she is grateful that he has got safely over the measles; because "Uncle Bob had them after he was grown up, and I did think, Miss, it looked so silly." And so on, and so on, and so on.
At last I begged her to stop chattering and sent her away. I can't understand her. Susan has always been unsophisticated, but it's something fresh for her to be vulgarly stupid and thick-headed.
The outlook is disconcerting. My letter-writing on her behalf gives Ruddington a false notion of her knowledge and her mental power. So long as she retains her charming simplicity no great harm will be done; for, after he is disillusionized about her brains, he can easily fall in love afresh with her naïveté. But this flat-footed, Hodge-like, charmless stupidity is quite another story.
She's too stupid even to ask about the little side-bits.
Waiting for tea.