“And if you’re not I’m sure that I’m not,” said he. “But you’ll not find that Miss Priscilla Wadhurst is that sort of a clever girl.”
Mrs. Wingfield felt that if the young woman had impressed upon her son the fact that she was a clever girl, but not that sort of a clever girl, she was the cleverest girl of all; but she herself, being possessed of a certain share of this particular quality, knew perfectly well that in the way of a man with a maid there is nothing so stimulating as opposition, especially reasonable opposition, so she hastened to assure him that of course she should be greatly pleased if Mrs.—or, as she wished to be called, Miss Wadhurst—would call upon her; and the son, without being a clever man, had still no difficulty in perceiving that his mother was afraid to show any further opposition to his suggestion lest mischief might come of it. But he only said, “That’s all right, then. I think she may come, though I’m not quite sure.”
“I don’t suppose that she would find a visit to an old woman who has lived away from everything in the world for so long very attractive,” she remarked. “Have you asked this young person to advise you as to the dairy?”
“Not I. But I’m sure she’ll do it. She wears no frills.”
“You met her yesterday?”
“Well, I was going to speak to Lady Cynthia Brooks about the Mixed Doubles, when she rushed into the arms of Miss Wadhurst—there was kissing and all that; it seems that they had been at school together, and very chummy. Lady Gainsforth was tremendously taken with her.”
He did not think that it was absolutely necessary for him to tell his mother that he first made the acquaintance of Miss Wadhurst in the room next to that in which they were sitting; and he saw no harm in introducing the name of a countess and her daughter in the course of his account of meeting Miss Wadhurst.
“Cynthia Brooks was always a nice girl,” said Mrs. Wingfield. “I’m not sure that going about from one tennis meeting to another is very good for a girl; but if her mother doesn’t mind—— Wasn’t it at Biarritz we met them? That was three years ago—just before you went to South America.”
“Yes; it was at Biarritz. We carried off the M.D.s; but we had a very shady lot against us. We should have no chance playing together at such a meeting as this.”
Not another word passed between them on the subject of Miss Wadhurst, and Mrs. Wingfield went to her bed in a condition of great uncertainty on the subject of her son and the young woman who was to come to pay her a visit. A farmer’s daughter, with views of dairy management; that was rather a curious sort of young person for Jack to take up—if he had taken her up. But Jack was, she knew, like many other young men of whom she had been hearing recently—ready to do the unexpected. It was shocking to hear of them marrying girls who danced and did things. She had not quite succeeded in determining whether dancing or a dairy was the worse. Hadn’t some well-known man written a poem about a dairymaid?—or was it a musical comedy? But here was a dairymaid with a romantic story swirling round her like one of those gauzy robes in which some premiere danseuse was accustomed to make her gyrations. Mrs. Wingfield had a horror of being in anyway associated with a person who had had a romance in his or her life. She connected romance with unrespectability just as she did cleverness and scheming.