When it was all over, Nell tried hard to lead her at once back to the house. But little Mrs. Staynes was too quick for her. Trotting up to the girl with what was only a decorous caricature of grief on her round apple face, she said:
“You must bear up, my dear Miss Mulgrave. ‘Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.’ We must be resigned to His will. You must control your grief, my dear.”
“I haven’t any grief,” said Freda in spite of Nell’s warning fingers on her arm.
Poor little Mrs. Staynes looked shocked and disconcerted.
“Of course, my dear, we know it’s not the same as if you had been brought up at home. Indeed, I told the poor Captain so, times without number, but he hardened his heart and would not listen to me. But still, of course, you feel all that it is right for a daughter to feel under the circumstances.”
Mrs. Staynes was getting hurried and nervous. Indeed, she could only give half her mind to the consolation of her husband’s bereaved young parishioner, for she held the Vicar’s goloshes in her hand, and if she did not turn up with them exactly at the moment when he was ready to put them on, both he and she were apt to think that she had only escaped perdition by the skin of her teeth.
Before Freda had time to answer, a rather loud and peremptory voice close to them startled both ladies. Standing beside them was a robust-looking man in a close cap and thick travelling ulster, who suddenly struck in:
“And pray what is it, ma’am, that a daughter should feel under the circumstances of losing a father who had, from a sentimental point of view no claim to the name?”
He took Freda’s hand and shook it warmly, almost before she had had time to recognise in him her friend of the journey.
“A friend of yours, Miss Mulgrave?” asked the Vicar’s wife rather primly.