“In the ordinary course of life I should not pay your mother a visit,” she said. “I know my place.”
He laughed at the humour of her demureness, and she laughed because he was laughing; but only for a second.
“There’s nothing to laugh at,” she said. “I made a plain statement. In the ordinary course of life social visits are not exchanged between the ladies of the Manor and the girls of the farm; but in this case, and if you will save me the trouble of explaining how it is that I go... and yet I don’t know that you can explain it or that I can explain it... oh, you had better not try to explain anything.”
“Is there anything to explain?” he asked.
“There is a great deal to explain, but nothing that can be explained,” she replied. “I will be pleased to pay Mrs. Wingfield a visit. That’s all that need be said on the matter. I am sure that she will be very nice to me, and I know that I will be as nice to her as I can be to any one. Haven’t I always been nice to you?”
“Nice—nice?” he repeated. “That’s hardly the word. You have been nicer to me than any one I ever met What have you been to me? There’s a word that just describes it, if I could only find it. Guardian—no—no—some other word?”
“Pupil-teacher?” she suggested with some more demure humour.
He paid no attention to her. He was not in the humour for humour at all.
“I know the word, if I could only find it,” he said, musingly. “By George! I have it—good angel—that’s the word. You have been my good angel. You have indeed.”
“That was a word worth waiting for,” she said gravely. “I don’t think that there is any word that I should like better to hear any man apply to me than that word—good angel. It simply means, of course, good influence; and that is woman’s mission in the world of men; it is not so much to do things herself as to influence men in the doing of things. And when you come to think of it, woman has played a rather important part in the history of the world by adopting this line. She hasn’t actually done much herself, but she has been a tremendous power for good or evil in her influence upon man. That is the sort of woman I should like to be—an influence for good.”